Over the past year, an ongoing and severe drought has parched most of Mexico, draining reservoirs and leaving parts of the country grappling with an acute water crisis. Since mid-March, scorching temperatures have led to at least 26 heat-related deaths, according to the nation’s health ministry. The double-whammy of weather...
For many years now, almost the only way to find tech-related answers was to add the word “reddit” to your search. Before the Rexodus ofc.
Nowadays a lot of people go straight to where they wanted to find info - Wikipedia, StackOverflow, IMDB, etc. - and search from there.
Google itself has admitted how bad it has gotten, and in response they decided to voluntarily reduce their profits and return everything back to when it all worked… - no I’m just kidding, they said wait a bit and AI will save us all, somehow (from ourselves?).
One tip is that most of us “use” Lemmy a bit differently than Reddit. Most niche communities (with some exceptions ofc:-) here aren’t as active as they were on Reddit, so many of us end up spending more time in the generalized ones - e.g. !technology rather than specific ones like r/OnePlus or even r/Android.
Another is that Lemmy requires more “curation” than Reddit’s r/all or r/popular did. If you subscribe to the communities you want then your Subscribed feed should have good stuff, but that requires your attention first, and many of us just surf the All feed to make sure we don’t miss things, and then block communities that we will never ever want (sports, highly specific locations, foreign-language ones that did not set their language preference, etc. - all of these can be viewed while logged out but then when you log in they won’t fill your All feed).
Another aspect of curation is that this place is fairly diverse & varied - think like r/conservative and r/liberal. So you may want to block some Fediverse “instances” that your own instance has not yet, to maintain your own sanity - you would do this in your Settings, Blocks, scroll down to Blocked Instances and add the name there. With you being on Lemmy.World, the main one lemmygrad.ml is already pre-blocked for you, but you may consider others that you want to add. Hexbear.net is another extremely common choice, if you don’t like that style - hint: the word “consent” seems to mean little to them, and my experience on the Fediverse improved 95% after blocking them. Sadly I recently blocked Kbin.Social too, despite that being my first Fediverse instance, b/c the owner has been MIA for so very long and also refuses to share administration duties with anyone, so all of the spam that I was seeing on the Fediverse was spreading from defunct communities there that mods had abandoned and the admin did nothing about. And just to be comprehensive, the other instance that many people block is, ironically given that it is where this post is, Lemmy.ml. I am not advocating for that one, and I don’t block it myself, just saying that many people do - and I get it, b/c 80% of the time when I get the most batshit insane replies, it is from that instance; though there is good stuff there as well… sometimes:-P, and it is just a large instance so it is going to have a lot of bad as well as good actors on it as a result.
For myself, I am enjoying Lemmy way better than I ever did Reddit - this is perhaps what Reddit used to be, before I visited it, and before it killed itself. I hope you find ways to enjoy Lemmy for yourself too!:-)
An “Appeal to extremes” argument specifies that extremes are all that exist - no middle ground allowed. Similarly, the “No true Scotsman” one says that likewise, nobody truly disagrees, at least nobody who matters. Next, why would we consider it okay to use slurs, even/especially against bots - it’s not like saying anything like that will change their minds, but literal children are watching the exchange, and it could change theirs?
Anyway: they will do their thing, but what you are responsible for is doing yours, so your response to them is 100% on you. Do with that what you will.
I have a question, seriously: why are we looking to the President - the Chief Executive Officer - to define our policy? Isn’t he supposed to only implement the policies that have been enacted by Congress? Despite how Rs tried to portray Obama, and how Trump would act if given half a chance, the role of President isn’t identical to that of King - just how much leeway does he even have here? When tRump tried to insert himself in the opposite manner way back in the day, we impeached him - the President can propose but not define policy, right?
On that note, he did try to halt funding to Israel. Republicans in Congress overruled him. Ofc the reality is far more complex than what I am portraying here, b/c while he must enact existing policies, again he also should propose new ones too… which he isn’t doing much of. But how could we even tell the difference between Biden attempting to “work within the (existing) system”, set forth by our behind-the-scenes overlords and Congress + Supreme Court (heavy sidenote: with its current make-up, that Trump put into place), vs. him not really caring that much about the issue at all? Or really, at the end of the day, is there even a functional difference between them?
I don’t know. I truly don’t know. All I know is that while Biden may not be as liberal as people would have hoped, tRump is actively anti-liberal. And those are our two choices. :-( If we want better, perhaps we need to put forth some effort to make it happen. Like step up and actually run for office - and then dodge all the literal death threats + attempts that would result from conservatives for doing so. Otherwise, we get whatever they offer to us - they meaning those who will actually act rather than simply talk. Which remember, Biden is one of them, and he even has already made it to the short-list of the only two candidates who matter, which isn’t nothing!
Can he though? Well anyway, he definitely could do more, no question about that.
What bothers me is this entitled thinking, like “we deserve better candidates” - okay, yeah, obviously, but we won’t get those until we make them. AOC, Bernie, there actually are several who are good, but apparently for some (whatever) reason they aren’t “viable”? Hence why Biden is there, instead of one of them.
(And you even ran - damn that’s impressive! To be absolutely clear, I am not calling you one of these “entitled thinkers”, b/c you actually stood up and tried to DO SOMETHING about it, first-hand - kudos!)
Biden offers the good that can be done, rather than what should be - to use the Batman phrase, the politician that America needs, rather than the one it deserves… or whatever?
There is also that phrase, attributed to Otto von Bismarck, that “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” Put another way, the whole thing is a matter of pragmatism, instead of idealism.
And in every other situation, Biden has been the pragmatist. Gas prices, unionization of railway workers, inflation, etc. So I wondered if he’s doing something similar here too, even if it looks like 10-D chess to us, and based on his other past successes (that the media refuses to highlight, b/c they are “boring”), I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But my knowledge on this matter, especially lately, is shaky, so I could definitely be wrong there - perhaps this issue truly is the dividing line. I need to stop talking about that until I read up on the matter some more.
Though one thing that won’t ever change is that in the next upcoming election, we still only get the two choices though - Biden vs. Trump:-(. It’s like: imagine a robber steals your wallet, and offers you either the cash or your ID cards back (apparently the credit cards aren’t on the table for negotiation), but what they want in return is for you to say “please” - what do you do? Take one, or the other, or just walk away and leave both behind? Fighting the US government does not seem an effective option. We can cry about it, maybe go away and train for decades (as Batman did:-P) with the thought of perhaps getting revenge, but in that moment, our choices are limited. As I understand it, that is pragmatism.
Not in a useful way though. Conservatives fought, and therefore won the overturning of Roe v. Wade - they put in decades of effort to achieve that, and therefore did. They stood in solidarity, prior to Trump, and now the whole party is sliding QUICKLY and EXTREMELY Right-wards, to once again stand in solidarity at that new point.
In contrast, liberals tend to eat their own - case in point, look at what we all are doing to Biden right now (me too just to a lesser degree than some others).
And I am not even saying that is “wrong” - that is simply the nature of the game when talking about “correctness”. e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, but 1.9 and 2.1 don’t “quite” cut it, nor even 1.99 or 2.01, despite being so very, very close. Or let’s use an even more hyperbolic example to illustrate: suppose I ask a liberal what the answer is to the question of “what is 1+1?”, and the Democrats step in to say that “the answer is +1,000” (while ofc pocketing the other $998.00, b/c of corruption). That’s way off… but the answer that conservatives give is to kill your dog and fuck your mom, and then risk her life too b/c she’s not allowed to have an abortion even despite the rape (and then the Republicans pocket not only $998.00 but $1,999,999.00, just b/c they can). So which is “better”? Are there alternatives? Is the answer given by the Democrats more “correct”, despite being so very, VERY wrong? TLDR on this point: they are both wrong, but not equally so.
If Dems and Biden really wanted to get people off the couch and in to vote they’d be figuring out what it takes and doing it…
Yup.
Instead they once again doubled down on the most establishment candidate they could find.
Yup.
The rich people - like HRC - are so disconnected from modern life, that they cannot conceive of what it is like to be a Millennial or a Gen-Z person, who looks forward to not just “intern first, then real job”, but “intern forever, b/c that’s just all there is these days, stable job=never, ability to own a home=never (or is it never? either way it certainly looks that way now and shows no signs of improving… literally ever, plus Social Security + Medicare are drying up and with that money have been already stolen from us, will literally never, ever, EVER be returned…)”. And HRC’s response to ALL of that was, in short: “Life is good, let’s keep it that way, shall we?:-P PokeMon-go-to-the-polls, woot (please believe that I’m just like you - one of the [insert your predefined categorization here] - and btw did you know I carry hot sauce in my purse at all times?)”.
On the other hand, the Gaza situation is just the icing on the cake: regardless of the actual genocide going on there, it won’t fix our economy. The latter involves terribly boring steps, many of which Biden seems to be taking? But the media won’t report them, and I wouldn’t understand them myself anyway so… we are back to the “Just trust me bro - I got this! (also I’m totally not a senile old man-puppet propped up on crack to give speeches while the real work is done behind-the-scenes, which we cannot talk about for uh… reasons, but it’ll be good, this time, I promise, just vote for me and you’ll see what we have planned later!)”
Also, are we even arguing anymore? :-P I think we agree on pretty much everything. Oh I remember, there’s one more detail got us started: the difference between what I am saying vs. you is that we are not being offered a primary with which to pick a different approach. So when you say things like “The Dems needed to…” and “If Dems and Biden really wanted to…” and “Instead they’re just… It’s really irritating to”, my question is: now what? So you don’t like it - I don’t either - but what are we going to do about it? Yeah, that’s what I thought - I have no clue either.:-( But I’ve been wrong before - e.g. I thought no way would Trump win - so now I am just trying to strain my eyes open as wide as I can make them, to learn from whatever happens.
But it’s become deeper than that lately. Like, even if vaccines did have a risk of harm, so too does the disease it is meant to protect against - and like, the risk of harm from a horrific disease such as Polio would vastly outweigh a small risk of even actual, full-on, literal death from taking the vaccine. It’s a cost-to-benefit trade-off.
On the other hand, conservatives not only made it a point of pride to not wear masks themselves, but they went so far as to work to prevent people form putting masks onto their own faces - what happened to the “freedom” aspect there? Nobody is that dumb, as to think that having flunked out of high school, they now “know better” than PhD+MD scientists with literally decades of experience doing world-class research at top-tier institutions.
It’s so far beyond “alternative facts” these days - even they know they’re lying (e.g., about all of Trump’s many trials), but at this point they simply do not seem to care. Trump “tells it like it is” (no he doesn’t), that’s it and that’s all, no questions (allowed to be) asked.
And judges, and journalists, and election counting officials, and engineers (tbf whistleblowers like at Boeing and for train safety may be a different style of targeting, more profit- than politics-driven), and remember the arson of Bernie Sanders house, and the guy with the hammer at Pelosi’s, plus all the random people who simply get shot b/c an angry young white man was radicalized, and we should not forget the good police who try to hold the line against the bad ones, and get harassed (possibly killed) as a result.
Also, many doctors and nurses either died or left medicine altogether - some literally left society itself behind as they headed for the hills (mountainous regions farther away from the denser population areas) - due to their experiences during the pandemic, especially from people coming in with guns threatening them to save their loved ones, who ofc at that point were well past saving (a vaccine != a cure).
The USA has not been a first-world nation for a long while (and not just b/c it’s an outdated term).
This is what we get when we want BuT oUr FrEeDuMs ThO. Disinformation is deadly. I wish we would remember that the next time Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets out the home address of a fellow congressperson, which surely was not intended for any kind of… “harm”, goodness gracious me, why, perish the thought!
Not in its current form at least - this pot is boiling over. Then again, climate change may end human habitation in most areas on earth by then too, so there’s that to consider as well:-P.
Searching for product recommendations has become harder and harder over the years. I used to google or browse reddit for reviews, used them to create a shortlist of products and then actually dig deeper and compare them....
OnePlus phones no longer use Oxygen OS - it has been supplanted by Color OS, the same as used in Huawei phones.
With the cofounder having left OnePlus (to start Nothing phone!), and the demise of Oxygen OS, and the ending of the offering of “flagship killer” models, the company has entirely rebranded itself these days to be a “full flagship” along the likes of Samsung and Google and Apple, though ofc far behind all of those.
They are half-decent phones, reputedly, i.e. possibly worth replacing the OS on just to get the hardware for the specs, though the other cofounder - the one who remained behind - has a history of alternately playing nice for a few years then betraying the entire user base, then rinse & repeat with newer customers, so for someone who does not want to replace the OS with a custom ROM I would not recommend them.
My own phone’s update (7T) was so buggy (it made a minor but noticeable international news sensation) that - I kid you not - I thought that the device might literally explode. I quickly turned it off and it did not, but it got REALLY hot for awhile. After researching, the solution was simple: boot the device into recovery mode and wipe the temporary cache. But WTF OnePlus, you couldn’t have had the update do that automatically rather than scare people like that? And I think that melted some internal shielding component b/c even after replacing the OS the phone has never behaved the same - I can no longer hold it in my hands anymore for more than a few minutes at a time b/c it literally hurts and even makes red marks on my skin. My device went from buttery-smooth scrolling - a phone I LOVED, and raved about to anyone who would listen, proudly showing it off - to a piece of crap in less than ten minutes, due to a buggy update rollout. :-(
My update experience seems worse than most, but I am far from the only one, when the company decided that their most popular model - the 7-series - simply was not worth maintaining anymore, as they dropped support for Oxygen OS from the 6-series and older models, and switched to the Color OS for the 8-series and newer models, leaving the 7-series delayed for a long time whether the company would do anything at all for us.
i.e. Carl Pie left for good, solid reasons - not just to start a new thing but to leave the old bad thing behind:-|.
Yup. I mean it was, prior to the update. I wonder if I might have caused any of the issues b/c I delayed installing it for months, but I kept hearing so many sad horror stories about the update that broke everything, that I knew it would cause problems. But I was applying for and then starting a new job at the time, so replacing the phone OS was not something I wanted to do at that time.
The 7-series just basically fell through the cracks between where the older 6-series got one last update and newer 8-series were promised to get a few future ones, but they short-changed the 7-series updates both in number and SUBSTANTIALLY in quality too:-(. People felt really betrayed at the time. And then ofc most everyone forgot, just like what happened at Reddit, and Google, etc.
I think Carl Pie may have taken a bunch of programmers with him during all of that, and the company must have already decided to switch to Color OS (though they had not announced it at the time, yet it seems more clear in retrospect), so they did not have the programmers that they needed, and it would be a short-term job if they went and got them, so instead they simply… didn’t do as many updates as originally planned, and the 2 that they did do were so crappily deployed that I literally wish that they had offered zero updates rather than what they did. It didn’t quite “brick” my phone, but neither did I have a phone that worked even a tenth as well as it had previously, prior to the update.
And the thing is, OnePlus has a history of doing stuff like that. My brother warned me, and I didn’t listen - “naw bro, they’ve changed, that was the past, etc.” I fooled myself there, thinking that any bad changes would simply prompt me to swap out the OS with a custom one and I’d be fine to continue forward with the nice specs. I did not count on their update process being SO BAD that it literally damaged the hardware on my phone:-(.
Australia reported its first human case of avian influenza on Wednesday in a child who authorities said had been infected in India but made a full recovery, while a different highly contagious strain was found on an egg farm....
In many rural areas, they have run out the mom & pop stores, plus people will pay for convenience, so I expect that they expect to totally get away with this.
People traveling between cities will opt for the comfortable, safe, familiar places. And sheeple that go to McDonald’s just do what they’re told. I imagine the CEO would not risk their shares unless they thought they’d get away with doing this to their poor customers.
A lot of businesses do this, purposefully aggravating their customer base, and then say - it’s Biden, he made me do it. So for a Magat, going to McDonald’s might even be a source of pride!? (Except delicious Chick-fil-A already occupies that niche!?)
The brutal heat in Mexico is causing howler monkeys to drop dead from trees (wapo.st)
Over the past year, an ongoing and severe drought has parched most of Mexico, draining reservoirs and leaving parts of the country grappling with an acute water crisis. Since mid-March, scorching temperatures have led to at least 26 heat-related deaths, according to the nation’s health ministry. The double-whammy of weather...
Using Google whilst Duck Duck Go is down. How long has Google been this bad?
So ddg is down, so I visit Google. It’s been some years....
Goodbye Reddit, Hello Lemmy!
Today I deleted my Reddit account....
New Dehumanization Tactic Dropped (lemmy.cafe)
If everyone I disagree with is a bot it permits me to curse them down and to call them slurs, right?...
Conservative Owns the Libs by Paying $4,000 a Month for His Ford F-350 (thehardtimes.net)
Kat (sh.itjust.works)
Someone stop the ride, I want to get off (midwest.social)
Colorado GOP calls for all children to be pulled from public schools (www.9news.com)
Harassment of scientists is surging — institutions aren’t sure how to help (www.nature.com)
As researchers increasingly face many kinds of attack over their work, there is debate about how to support and protect them....
Captain! Even Xelo never had such thoughts about me. You may energize. (lemmy.world)
How do you search for honest product recommendations?
Searching for product recommendations has become harder and harder over the years. I used to google or browse reddit for reviews, used them to create a shortlist of products and then actually dig deeper and compare them....
Australia reports first human avian flu infection (www.reuters.com)
Australia reported its first human case of avian influenza on Wednesday in a child who authorities said had been infected in India but made a full recovery, while a different highly contagious strain was found on an egg farm....
McDonald's is getting rid of self-serve drinks and some locations may charge for refills (www.cbsnews.com)
me_irl (lemmy.world)