My guess is that hitchhiking+skateboarding means grabbing an actual moving trailer hitch or three. Were he manually kicking the pavement with zero assistance, I cannot imagine covering 55 miles a day without it being downhill the entire time. After all, it is F L A T after you cross the Rockies. For at least a thousand miles. That or he has legs like tree trunks.

You guys are getting a retirement?

Lately, I go on a 30-minute “Not Interested” spree on the recommendations feed when I need to weed things out. I burn everything that I know I’m never going to watch. I have 500+ subscriptions and the ratio of those with new content to trash the algorithm hands me is too damn low. So I have to set it straight some times. After this correcting action, things are noticeably better for about a month.

Another move is to right-click and open unfamiliar stuff in an incognito/privacy window. This helps keep similar material out of your feed.

“Clock App” = TikTok.

Took me a minute, not gonna lie.

Welcome to the top of the sigmoid curve.

If you were wondering what 1999 felt like WRT to the internet, well, here we are. The Matrix was still fresh in everyone’s mind and a lot of online tech innovation kinda plateaued, followed by some “market adjustments.”

I was gonna say. It’s this exactly. Plus a nice feature of Fediverse stuff is that it can scale down to hobby levels if needed. Venture funded commercial services abhor this and will compromise all kinds of things (e.g. morals, ethics) to keep going at whatever scale they’re at.

This gives me hope. It’s like we’re all finally learning how to moderate forums in this ridiculous climate.

I agree, and can sympathize: I lack the education to see around all those corners. That said, I think that’s all plausible were it to happen.

No idea. Maybe they’ll keep it like the Gadsden Flag holdout libertarians? “We were here first” and all that.

Honestly, I was thinking about the people out there with tattoos. There has to be at least one.

For me, the cherry on top is how the “InfoWars” name is still completely apt, for completely different reasons.

I think there’s always going to be that group of people. Another example: folks that didn’t notice that The Colbert Report was satire.

That also sounds like the kind of prank that Cards Against Humanity would pull if they had access to as much cash. I love this so much.

Pretty unlikely, right?

Very. The last time, warfare was far less asymmetric than it is now. Millions of people would need to be well past the point of “dying for their values and ideals” before that would get traction politically.

What’s the process like?

There literally isn’t one, or at least, not an official one; we’re not the EU. One spot on a map says “no” and the bigger spot on the map around it says “LOL… oh wait you’re serious?” Then they fight.

Also, the optics are very different for a state like California or any other economic powerhouse in the union. These places make up a huge chunk of the country’s GDP, so losing them would cost a massive chunk of the tax base. Plus, that would reduce the overall coastline of the remainder. Combined these outcomes are strategically “very bad”, further motivating the use of force to counter it.

The thing to keep in mind about idiocy is that idiots make mistakes, a lot. At the same time, those mistakes are usually small-stakes affairs (it’s hard to make big mistakes with no money and/or resources) and are usually recoverable. The idea that their mistake could affect so many others simply does not happen, because that’s not how things typically work.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the RNC was more “with the times” than the DNC on how to campaign in the current media-circus climate. That’s right, they were more progressive when it came to using information technology. This observation burns like the heat of a thousand suns and I hate it, but there it is.

Granted, thanks to the likes of FoxNews and bloviating try-hards on radio and podcasts, they had the inside track here. Still, a billion USD should have leveled the playing field for a short campaign like Harris’.

Ah, so that’s the key. I’m not eager to try this, but I’ll absolutely keep it in mind should I need it. Thank you.

I’m mostly onboard here, but there’s some nuance to consider.

Wipe all expression from your face, and stare at them. […] Bystanders will literally stop what they’re doing and watch.

Fact. Monkey see, monkey do. If you physically pass as someone older and wiser, this works even better.

Their brains will scream “I’m about to be excluded from the group”, and they’ll start babbling. They’ll confess their sins and be harsher on themselves than anything you could say

Plausible, but I think this outcome is one of many possible. Pressing on an individual’s psychological weak-spots can trigger a fight/flight/freeze/fawn reflex; your anecdotes are centered on the “fawn” response. I would caution the reader that, unless you know that person well, you really can’t predict which of the four you will get in this situation. If doing this you MUST be prepared for that fight reflex to kick in; they may get mouthy and/or physical. Social justice is important, but do take your opponent’s height, weight, build, and if they are armed into account, before proceeding.

Portions in North America are HUGE.

The restaraunt portion thing is… a big problem. Here’s what I think is going on.

I’m pretty sure that it has more to do with profitability than customer demand, although it’s gone on for long enough perhaps it’s both by now. The key here is that food sales have pretty thin margins (except for soft drinks which are outrageously marked-up everywhere). If a restaurant chain suddenly downsized their portion sizes, people would realize very quickly that the price hasn’t scaled down to the same extent, as the current portion sizes are inflated to mask how much food service really costs. There’s a price floor to remain profitable and I think it’s a lot higher than people realize.

Silicon valley: Here is a device that makes it possible to exchange information to everyone, everywhere, immediately.

GOP: Oh, you mean I can disseminate anything I want? How about lies? That’d be neat.

Silicon valley: No, not like that.

One thing that I observed is that the right wing had/has the more progressive campaign, from a technology and media use standpoint. The DNC, on the other hand, was still more or less using the same moves they had back in the 1990’s, relying on extinct concepts like the fairness doctrine, debate performance, and journalistic integrity of news outlets (fact-checks anyone?).

It’s not just the Overton Window that has moved: our information diet has completely changed too. To win at politics today, the entire landscape has shifted to propaganda, bombast, showmanship, clickbait, and leading the 24/7 news cycle by the nose. You must be louder and more interesting than the other guy. I think it’s possible to play that game ethically though, without disinformation, but what’s clear is that billionaire-owned media isn’t going to do it for you anymore.

Holy shit. I never put this together.

Last time I was at a casino I kept asking myself: who honestly thinks any of this is a good idea, or thinks that any of these are “games” in the conventional sense? Now I know.

Edit: I have also been confronted with people that simply cannot do addition, period. It’s wild.