No Stupid Questions

I think a little clarification is needed. No. I don't actually think everyone there is insane. I don't care about the bans so stop trying to use that. HB enthusiasts coming here and trying to call me out achieves nothing besides proving my point

Edit: Feel free to keep trying to brigade me. It's not going to scare me to take this down

I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.

In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.

Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?

Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it IRL

This is a genuine question.

I have a hard time with this. My righteous side wants him to face an appropriate sentence, but my pessimistic side thinks this might have set a great example for CEOs to always maintain a level of humanity or face unforseen consequences.

P.S. this topic is highly controversial and I want actual opinions so let's be civil.

And if you're a mod, delete this if the post is inappropriate or if it gets too heated.

What the title says. I think there is still a long way for that to happen but i've been hopeful. What do you think?

You know, DOGE, fascist president and corporations dictating what people can do, institutions being ruined, laws being ignored. Is there any way out of that or is it over? Is the USA done?

Reason I'm asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say "city" think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn't seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I'm not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don't overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.

I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don't see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.

Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the "landlords are bad" sentinment?

Some FOSS programs, due to being mantained by hobbyists vs a massive megacorporation with millions in funding, don't have as many features and aren't as polished as their proprietary counterparts. However, there are some FOSS programs that simply have more functionality and QoL features compared to proprietary offerings.

What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their non-FOSS alternatives? Maybe we can discover useful new programs together :D

I'll start, I think Joplin is a great note-taking app that works offline + can sync between desktop and mobile really well. Also, working with Markdown is really nice compared with rich text editors that only work with the specific program that supports it. Joplin even has a bunch of plugins to extend functionality!

Notion, Evernote, Google Keep, etc. either don't have desktop apps, doesn't work offline, does not support Markdown, or a combination of those three.

What are some other really nice FOSS programs?

edit: woah that’s a whole load of cool FOSS software I have to try out! So far my experiences have been great (ShareX in particular is AWESOME as a screenshot tool, it’s what snip and sketch wishes it could be and mostly replaces OBS for my use case and a whole lot more)

it's like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won't do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?

What's the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That's unfriendly to say the least.

Google search failed to even find a hollywood movie, even after 1 hour of attempts. I don't really care about the movie, but I am terrified by the prospect that google now ceased to function on this basic level. Why is this happening?

I understand the explanations of seo and other stuff like spam content. But why are there NO relevant results at all.

I wouldn't mind having to start wading through results at page 2 or even 10 but now it utterly fails to find even the most basic things.

Things you found on the first attempt even just a year ago. Now they are effectively hidden.

To me functionally the entire internet has now vanished. I cannot access anything that I am searching for. Might as well not exist at all.

Has anybody found a way around this?

Is this on purpose? Is this an attack on the free internet, herding people to just the top 5 sites like facebook, youtube, tiktok, and so forth?

Are there search engines that still work?

On reddit I was a lurker that posted like once or twice a year, but ever since joining lemmy I've started posting multiple times a day.

They keep raising prices, stating that it's due to inflation, but then they keep having record profits.

Meanwhile, the average American can barely afford rent or food nowadays.

What are we to do? Vote? I have been but that doesn't seem to do much since I'm just voting for a representative that makes the actual decisions.

Kamala Harris running a damn near flawless campaign, with just a month 1/2 of campaigning. She’s been holding rallies nonstop with Tim Walz & not making her talking points about her race or gender like Hillary. She’s offering expanded healthcare, reinvestments back into public housing, wants to take on corporate greed, protect reproductive rights and chose a pro labor, pro education running mate.

Yet, she’s either barely leading or ties in most polls with a guy that:

Is a convicted felon.

Liable Sexual Predator.

Gets sentenced in November.

Has several more pending cases.

Increased Drone Strikes by 300%. (Joe Biden dosent use drones anymore).

Illegally killed an Iranian General unprovoked with a missle strike.

Increased tensions in Israel/Palestine with the Abraham Accords.

Wants war with Mexico (his words).

Tried to coup Venezuela.

Will bend the knee for Netanyahu’s potential war with Iran.

Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).

Obvious tax cuts for the rich.

Told people to drink bleach during the pandemic.

Is the main driving force for America’s current division.

Constantly attacks marginalized groups.

Tried to steal the 2020 election (Find Me 11,000 votes in GA).

Did Fake Elector Slates to pressure Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election.

Caused a riot on the capitol that lead to his OWN supporters dying.

Just got washed by Harris in the last debate, was completely unprepared on anything but immigration (“I have concepts of a plan”).

And so much more. So seriously what is it? Is it just the attraction to bigotry/racism? Is it to end “wokeness”. Is it because Kamala is a woman of color? You can’t use the both sides argument like Hilary or Biden, Kamala is the obvious better choice. Could you imagine if Kamala had as much baggage as Trump? The media would lose their minds.

Seriously, how the f*** is this guy still in the race?

(Disclaimer: I voted against Trump and anyone who supported him in my state.)

300 million lbs of fireworks and 2.7 billion dollars gone in a cloud of smoke.

Sure, there was the attempted assassination of Reagan and the fears for Obama as the first black President, but in those cases it was a lone nutter rather than a conspiracy.

How long can Trump crash the market before an angry billionaire decides to take him out? The remaining Koch brother is already pouring money into legal challenges against Trump...

Social media seems to be laughing its ass off about this tragedy, is it because the folks at burning man are perceived as frivolous hippies or something? Everyone I’ve ever met who was a regular burning man attendee has been a solid human being with strong morals, personally and financially responsible, a career. Upstanding members of society for sure. I guess all some people know is the sensationalized drugs and sex. A person died. This is a tragedy for an event that brings positivity into the world. Kind of annoyed.

And I'm being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don't understand it. Can someone please "steelman" that argument for me?

I know MediaBiasFactCheck is not a be-all-end-all to truth/bias in media, but I find it to be a useful resource.

It makes sense to downvote it in posts that have great discussion -- let the content rise up so people can have discussions with humans, sure.

But sometimes I see it getting downvoted when it's the only comment there. Which does nothing, unless a reader has rules that automatically hide downvoted comments (but a reader would be able to expand the comment anyways...so really no difference).

What's the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there's people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don't see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck...

I am not criticizing them, I'm just out of the loop.

I get it, Biden is old and that's a problem, but why doesn't anyone seem to have a problem with the fact that Trump is almost the same age, has 34 felonies, raped at least 2 women, went to Epstein's Island 11 times, sexualized his own daughter, stole classified documents, aligned himself with Xi and Putin, and can't remember common names?

Is all of that really better than being 2½ years older than he is right now?

It feels like Harris has to run a damn near flawless campaign just to BARELY beat this guy. Yeah you can bring up the current state of the country, but Trump mishandled COVID, there were over 200k deaths, BLM protest and was 2x impeached. And yet, Joe Biden BARELY beat him.

Trump is a convicted felon, liable sexual predator, caused an insurrection on the Capitol Hill, tried to steal the 2020 election (find me 11,000 votes), constantly kisses Russia’s ass, has more pending court cases and gets sentenced next month and overall has been the main driving factor in America’s division.

Yet, this race is STILL either 50/50 or a slight tilt (Harris leads the polling aggregate right now). Harris gets destroyed by the corporate media for almost anything, yet Trump is still lying and saying the most outlandish shit and nobody cares.

Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?

YouTube disallowing adblockers, Reddit charging for API usage, Twitter blocking non-registered users. These events happen almost at the same time. Is this one of the effects of the tech bubble burst?