it’s a form of private journalism, private opinion, and private art

But without any of the liability hazard.

This is my issue: the big platforms having their cake and eating it. In one breath, they claim to be little open-platform garage startups that can’t possibly be responsible for the content of their users; they’re just a utility. They need protection from Congress. In another breath, they’re the stewards of generations and children, the only ones responsible enough to tame the internet’s criminality. All while making trillions.

They want to be “private content” protected from the government? Fine. Treat them like it, legally.

It is when it warps the behavior of everyone else around you, and everything in charge of your life.

And I’m not just talking about the lost attention. The algorithms are not neutral.

Yeah, that’s going too far, but I understand the reaction to fanning over Valve.

There are a bazillion historical examples of why one should use, not trust, big businesses. They are entities to make transaction with, not people, and they will tighten the screws even if it takes decades.

This is doubly true in the software business.

And if the Valve superfans look at the world in 2026 and somehow don’t see that, I honestly don’t know what to tell them. They’re in such a completely different world than me I don’t know where to start.

Be prepared.

Don’t hate, but don’t trust Valve. Treat your Steam library like you don’t own it, and it could be enshittified at any time, because you don’t, and it could.

In practice, prioritize DRM-free stores when convenient. Or better yet, 1st party game dev stores. Archive any games or saves you actually want to go back to, just in case. Game like your Steam client install could require a subscription at a moment’s notice.

These comments…

Some day, Steam is going to enshittify, eat game devs for breakfast, and all these Steam fans will wonder how anyone could have possibly seen this coming.

Kind of like a certain online bookstore named after a river.

Not that I don’t enjoy Steam. But I trust them as much as any corporation: not at all.

HDR version for browsers that support it:

I think you mean monitor their usage.

And to be fair, this is fairly technical. Many parents aren’t very technical. They’re unaware of parental controls they have access to, and I think that’s by design (as it would be unprofitable for social media).

Yep! Good luck.

Also: I’m not sure if I was clear about this, but you shouldn’t look at this through the lens of conversion.

She’s your sister; you should respect her and meet her in the middle. Any atheist should appreciate morality and family. Buts it’s not going to work if she feels like you’re trying to force her into a ritual that makes her uncomfortable, or coerce her somehow.

Compromise.

Ask her to keep the morale core of Islam in-heart. Charity. Love. Peace. Judging the heart, not actions. Things like that, whatever they may be.

Request, gently and with no pressure, if she would participate in prayer with you when you are together, as a family activity. Because it’s important to you. And acknowledge you would respect her beliefs in the same breath, even if you don’t share them.

My experience is that faith, at its core, is a template for how to live as a good human being. Atheists (IMO) should have no problem with this aspect. Believers in God shouldn’t either.

But you can’t force aspects she doesn’t believe in onto her. And even if you could, you shouldn’t.

Can we not quote a Polymarket tweet? WTF.

not stereotypical religious people at all

Tons of religious folks are compassionate and generous. They live by their religion’s themes instead of obsessing over passages and worshipping demagogues.

It’s not hard to justify. “Love thy neighbor” is the heart of Christianity.

It’s the hateful fundamentalists, “traditionalists” and such that give them a bad name. The reputation is deserved, but it’s not fair to everyone else TBH.

Presumably because one needs a phone app or physical hardware (like a Yubikey) to use them.

I dunno. Shrug

Maybe occasionally when they visit their Mom, sometimes? But it’s not like they live together, no.

It’s not that unusual. I have 30-40 year old cousins that might share a bed with their mom, in gatherings where we’re short on beds. It’s a little odd, but… shrug.

I wouldn’t worry unless you feel like you have to do it.

The Internet Archive is a treasure.

It’s going to hurt when they annoy the wrong person and get sued out of existance.

Yeah. I prefer the idea of a bunch of 9-meters unless they can really perfect a cheap folding mirror to mass produce.

A small upper stage, an ion drive or something could get them to deep space. It’s not worth flying a whole Starship out there and burning more fuel to get it back; the return trip only makes sense for LEO.

I wonder how big you could get the mirror if you did it James Webb style in starship.

Presumably 7x ~8m hexagons folded up?

That is a good point though. And if one were to design a “budget” 9m space telescope, they could amortize the R&D dramatically by launching the same design many times, perhaps with different sensors for different purposes? Amortization is why the Falcon Heavy and such are so cheap, and why the Space Shuttle and JWST are obscenely expensive.

Okay, you’ve sold me. I hope this does happen.

Theoretically, even if we assume SpaceX is overshooting, that’s an interesting thought:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-cost-of-space-flight/

In practice? I’m more concerned about interest in funding astronomy in the first place.

That, and big fat telescopes are fundamentally expensive. And (at least for the optical variety) “swarming” them with a bunch of cheaper units isn’t as effective as building a big one.

I’d love to be wrong though. There are some interesting papers on swarms of optical telescopes for a larger effective aperture, but I’m not qualified to assess them.

Point being the ragebait crowded out all the interesting niche subs.

It wasn’t like that at Lemmy when I first joined, but with every passing day it feels more and more like a Voat, even if the political leaning is the polar opposite. And no one seems to want to do anything about it.

I mean, .world is an echo chamber too. It fits that exact definition.

It feels like all of Lemmy is going the way of Voat to me, and other long-dead Reddit clones. Drowned in ragebait once all the “hero” niche community posters leave from lack of engagement.