DigitalDilemma

My point is that you don’t know the actual truth. Nor do I. We can’t.

Bots and paid agents are not a new technique - in ancient times, countries would send spies undercover into enemy territory to sow discord. To rabble rouse and change public opinion. It’s the same now, just the tools have changed. No news source is entirely unbiased, even word of mouth is influenced. The only way you can determine the truth is by seeing it with your own, naked eyes. And even then, your own personal bias can change the context.

Reddit is a platform where its’ easy to get the ears of a lot of people, so it’s a big target. It’s not Reddit’s fault, and Lemmy would suffer exactly the same if we had the numbers they do.

What is different now on the world stage, mostly thanks to Trump, is that there’s no longer even any pretence to truth. The most powerful person in the world lies constantly, and his example proves that works. No shame, no integrity, no honesty - just lies and crude manipulation.

“Truth is the first casualty of war”

Yes.

IKR?

I was a heavy smoker for 15 years (40+/day). Giving that up was really hard, both emotionally and physically (they don’t warn you about the physical withdrawal effects - sweats, hyperactivity, insomnia, nausea etc) and habit breaking is a bastard.

But at least with that you can stop. It’s binary, you’re either not a smoker or you are. I’ve found managing diet to be harder than that.

I think that’s easier than not over eating because you have to eat and psychologically, I’ve found that harder. Every meal feels like a little failure.

I used mounjaro this year which has helped lose 10kg, but even that’s levelled off. Am also still a fat ass.

“Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.”

True that. We’ve just got a longer list of mistakes.

I actually hold the opposite opinion; that most people are generally good, or at the least, focused on their own problems most of the time.

This isn’t just personal experience (I’m old so have a bunch) but one example is that I watch a lot of travelling vlogs, mostly motorbikes. Whenever a rider has a breakdown, even in the middle of nowhere, someone will be along and will help. Even allowing for a general positive bias of the media, those who would take advantage of that situation are a tiny percentage.

What does happen though, is that those who aren’t good can abuse the goodness of others to gain power and influence, so are statistically more noticable.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Become a dog. They’re the happiest people I know.

“Tell me you work in America without telling me you work in America”

Big orders for single people, especially for stuff like curry, pizza and chinese, could just mean they’re buying several meals at once and are going to freeze it for later on. Think of it as meal prepping without having to cook.

As a 54 year old who has just had two weeks of agony because he forgot his age and tried to deadlift a 225kg motorbike by himself, I’m going to skip this one because I clearly haven’t learned anything.

I think what you’re looking for is known as kiosk software. Basically a locked down browser that has limited or zero user interaction possible.

Or by deliberately breaking DNS on that host. Add the entries you want to allow to /etc/hosts and not supply any upstream DNS servers. (Change of needing maintenance if those sites change IP)

“That’s a great question!” </ai>

The truth is, we don’t need AI to have misinformation, and AI is not the biggest problem in the current post-truth society. There has been a war going on globally in undermining truth for a long time. The old saying, “The first casualty in war is truth” is invalid now, because truth is no longer relevant and lies are weaponised like never before in history. People don’t want to be certain of something, their first reaction to news is to react at a deep and emotional level and the science of misinformation is highly refined and successful in making most people react in a certain way. It takes effort and training not to do that, and most of us can’t.

Journalists have been warning us about this for decades but integrity costs money, and that funding has been under attack too. It’s pretty depressing whichever way you look at it.

One of the interesting things about surveys is you only learn about the sort of people who complete surveys.

Thanks for the full and reasoned explanation.

I do agree there is nuance, and it is very difficult to balance these things when there is often not a great choice about who ultimately ends up with your money.

cancelled Prime in 2025 to boycott USA

Costco for local cucumbers, milk and cereal,

So Amazon bad, Costco good? Both huge American based multinationals, no?

Yes, I maybe misremembered the title. I couldn’t find it in a quick search and it’s up in the loft in a box somewhere.

A book. Teach yourself Perl in 30 days.

I bought it around 25-30 years ago. I have dyslexia and autism and have had problems learning from books in the past, but something about the way that was written just clicked for me.

It allowed me to write some pretty cool software, including a huge system that ran a large animal charity for a very long time, tons of automation software and scripts, and several full webuis. Indirectly it led me to a new career where I write perl every day.

(I can write in many other languages now, but that was the keystone of everything for me)

Money going online really changed the mood.

So true. Money spoils everything.