It's searching and digging through other people's follows. I found a bunch of people that I followed on Twitter, but didn't really enjoy the content, so I stopped using Mastodon. I don't think I'm cut out for microblogs.

Not known to cause gonorrhea.

Also: it's really hard to spell gonorrhea.

The industries supporting journalism have basically collapsed over the past few decades. If you have the means to support decent research and writing, please do so.

holy shit gabbo

That sounds really frustrating. What kind of phone is it?

[citation needed]

I live in a rural community. Facebook has more or less replaced the web here.

Businesses post their hours, specials, and information on Facebook. Some of them don't have websites. The rec centre has a hard time keeping their website up to date, but the Facebook group is always accurate. Newspapers have closed down, so a Facebook group keeps people apprised of what's going on (it seems to be pretty accurate, since everyone in town is part of it, people involved in events chime in). Kids and adults sports groups advertise and tell their members what's going on via Facebook groups.

It's a shitty medium, since the Facebook algorithm mixes trash advertisements with town-specific events, but it seems to suffice for the town's needs.

I suspect it isn't just my town. The network effect is strong, so I suspect there are niche communities where Facebook is verging on ubiquitous.

Considering the lawsuits, now seems like a good time.

Intrusive thoughts are terrifying. It's a testament to our collective willpower that we haven't horrifically murdered each other.

Also, I'm really glad the phrase "intrusive thoughts" came along. It made the whole thing a lot easier to talk about.

Time to cut some storage costs!

Sometimes being annoying is doing something wrong. If a kid is deliberately being disruptive after repeatedly being told not to, then yeah, they're doing something wrong.

Amazon probably outsourcing to a PR that specializes in union busting.

1. But the PR firm that has little technical expertise - they just know they need bots to do some astroturfing.

2. So the PR firm outsources to an IT consulting firm.

3. But the IT consulting firm only bids on contracts, they don't do the actual work, so they find a subcontractor.

4. The subcontractor may hire subcontractors. Continue this step for however many iterations the value of the contract will allow.

5. Eventually the subcontractor hires a gig worker or an underpaid staffer to do the minimal amount of work possible.

6. The gig worker avoids as much effort as possible, because they're paid by volume rather than time.

At this point the requirements may or may not be fulfilled, but the admins of each org are satisfied, so they move on to the next contract without verifying the work.

Edit: I wrote this facetiously, but u/SpaceNoodle found a news article suggesting at least some of these accounts are legit, as backed up by a Belling Cat investigation.

A bit of background from BuzzFeed.

study shows that the sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to downplay the link between sugar and heart disease — blaming saturated fat, instead

The report found that there was “considerable anxiety among social media users” after the cancellation of several Swift concerts earlier this month. Those concerts were scheduled to be held in Vienna but were canceled after threats from alleged would-be terrorists. A number of young men were arrested in connection to an apparent plot to kill people en masse. The suspects had allegedly planned to detonate explosive devices at the concerts.

Fair

Electronic voting is a terrible idea. Lil' bits of paper with representatives watching the vote counters is a pretty solid system. There's no problem there that needs to be fixed.

I say this as a Canadian who has volunteered as an observer in federal elections. I know Americans have their thing going on, but seriously. Paper ballots all the way.

Animal 15 began to lose coordination and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. Her condition deteriorated for months until the staff finally euthanized her. A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex “focally tattered.”

fuck

China missiles filled with water, not fuel: US intelligence

oops

US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case

So this is a good news story.

That drawing is way too good for a lil kid. At least I hope that's the case, because anyone under 10 shouldn't be watching The Boys.

Front end is hard. Slapping together some form elements, xhr requests, and DOM updates is easy. Building a usable, consistent UI, that makes proper user of the backend isn't. On top of that, every jackass thinks they get it because they're a user, so you get unsolicited suggestions from everywhere.

Source: front end devs sobbing in the cubicle next to me.

I guess they're discovering that your grocery store trip on Feb 17, 2017 does not help them target ads.

It's not a competition

That's loser talk

there were several dollar store trinkets that already broke,

My kids got two or three items each that promptly broke. Into the garbage they go.

I hate the dollar store so much. It's a waste of money and an environmental train wreck.

It's ripping

When Reddit’s year end recaps were released — which give statistics on activity for individual subreddits such as top posts and comments — they indicated Russia was the third most common country of origin for users visiting many of these [small subreddits for Albertan towns], causing moderators to rethink what was behind the trolling activity they had contended with a few months before.

I don't think there's any question about the interference campaign existing. At this point the question is about influence. How effective are these trolls?

And what was the second country, and why isn't that a problem?

Came for APIpocolypse. Stayed for Sync.

eventually, yes

Alternatively, the first three panels could be answering 734 emails, 6383 slack messages, and avoiding two required trainings.

LET'S FUCKING GO

The amendment was narrowly passed via a statewide ballot initiative in 2022 despite claims by opponents that it would force wealthy residents and businesses to leave the state.

Props for getting it passed.

I love shitting on Python, but I feel like all those problems are present in libraries for other languages as well. There's a tonne of that crap for JS/TS.

Similarly, I find a fair number of Rust crates (that I want to use) have virtually no doc or inline examples, and use weird metaprogramming that I can't wrap my head around.

Like you're helping the fediverse grow.

It feels like a civic duty.

From what I see, Lemmy is just at the edge of "not enough content". So many communities have one or two committed posters. So I comment as much as I can and post when I see something interesting.

did not specify where on the 356ft space station the 1in-wide red dwarf tomato was located, or in what condition.

boo

I suspect it's shorthand for "the person forced into prostitution through economic and social circumstances beyond their control".

Wasn't there some copypasta about WWII being totally unbelievable? Like the USA busting out a super weapon and having a kind hearted, unbelievably capable, wheelchair bound president? And "bad guys" so bad they murder millions just because they're so evil? And the Allies being lead by a perpetually drunk burnout from WWI who could spit hilarious one-liners?

so you're saying it's a different article now?

At the other end of the spectrum: My wife and I made a minimal gifts pact. We each got each other minor crap we needed for around the house. It was perfect. No waste. No extravagance. Just stuff we were going to get anyway.

Make sure you use food safe filament! You wouldn't want to get cancer.

It's bizarre that Sunbird touted their solution as end-to-end encrypted, when it can't be - iMessage drops to plaintext on the Mac farm.