Out of the loop

That's it basically.

Someone explain the memes please.

It feels like 6 months ago, I couldn't go a few hours without being exposed to some new wild claims from Microsoft or Google, or any of the other companies working on this. Lately nothing comes up in any of my feeds.

I am seeing a lot of memes with the outline of a man lying on the ground with references to Saddam Hussein. Can somebody tell me what is going on?

I left reddit about 2 years ago before the oct 7th attacks, so I never really saw the reaction over there. I didn't expect it to be like lemmy, reddits always been a bit islamaphobic and quick to take up US state department propaganda, but I assumed by now though that since most on there are liberals under 50 that theyd be somewhere around "not a genocide, but Israel is committing atrocities and a ceasefire would be good." on the issue

But someone was calling out reddit in a thread about the flotilla being bombed and I looked into it and the thread on worldnews was full of denials and calling it a false flag. Looked more into worldnews and every thread on the issue is full of zionist saying things along the lines of "anything is justified to get rid of the evil terrorists hamas" or downplaying the atrocities.

Is this just a worldnews issue? Is it the mods over there? Is there some other sub with more pro-palestine news that split off? Has it been like this for the whole conflict?

There must be dozens of the damn things cable tied up lamp posts lining a few streets around here (West Yorkshire). What the fuck happened?

I was idly browsing browser (heh) market share graphs when I noticed there was a bump for Chrome in Asia.

None of the obvious countries had it, but I eventually traced it back to unlikely Vietnam. What happened there?! Why did Chrome crush all other browsers in may all of a sudden?

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/viet-nam

I know nothing about this but apparently most people are fully abreast of the situation

I have noticed posts and comments mocking posts which have a mild curse word crossed out or ‘censored’ in some way. Yes, it was here before, but now I feel it increased. This post was my final straw: https://lemmy.world/post/34998482

I am noticing similar instances on the rise, has something happened? A law was passed somewhere?

Have a look, you'll see what I mean. They seem to think the site is dead or dying.

On youtube I see tons of avatars and mentions of clippy, the oldscool windows help tool. Are they protesting something?

I've seen people posting tweets from public figures talking about alligators, seen other people joking about alligators. It appears to me that the issue is political, not environmental, but I don't fully get the picture.

What's going on?

Saw people talking in comments at several places now, expressing animosity towards them to say the least, always presented as something that everyone seems to know about.

I'm finding it hard to find concise info on what's been going on in/around Iran. Can anyone throw a brief timeline of events for me? Pretty pretty please?

Edi: thanks for all the comments and answers, appreciate it!

Why are we doing them? What did I miss?

Why are so many companies updating their privacy policy lately, I noticed many companies including reddit and some games I play updating their privacy policies? Why is that, is it just a coincidence or something big happened?

For instance: https://lemmy.ca/comment/16835886

I'm not very active on Mastodon, but saw this post - browsing the bluesky hashtag for a bit afterwards did not really give me much info. I can definitely imagine enshittification happening there, but what is causing the current drama in particular?

Disclaimer: I'm not American, I don't live in the US

JD Vance didn't exist in my life before he became vice president. Now, I am aware that I also don't know anything about most vicepresidents in the world. But I've seen a lot of people who are also USA outsiders making comments about him as if implying something else, as if relying on facts everyone ought to know. I get the feeling most people have already heard about him from before and I'm late to the party.

So, what do I need to know, other than his political affiliations? Yes, we all know who the president is and that says a lot, but, is Vance notorious for anything else?