calling out the way SOME americans act

Emphases clearly mine. Stereotyping 350 million people based off the behavior of a minority isn’t exactly productive. They’re not saying “some Americans” in these potshot posts; they’re stereotyping all of us, and I definitely have a right to be offended by ugly stereotypes.

I’m not worried about AI turning into Skynet. That’s like item # 1,576,549 on my list of reasons I hate AI.

It’s literally everything else about AI:

• Creating scarcity in PC parts and components to feed the AI bros’ insatiable hunger for growth.
• Rent-seekers like Bezos trying to spin the above into yet more “you’ll own nothing and be happy”
• Destroying farmland or otherwise affordable property for sprawling datacenters that create like maybe 12 jobs that can’t be done remotely.
• We never or barely addressed the massive disinformation problem and here’s AI turning it up to 11 by making it trivial to shit out whatever narrative you want at massive scale.
• Stealing from content creators to feed itself and then denying those same creators web traffic
• Just being a bullshit machine that people blindly believe
• Shoving it into everything when no one asks for it and many don’t want it
• Causing electricity rates to go up and subjecting people to either rolling blackouts or dirty generator exhaust because of demand
• The massive use of water for cooling
• Not actually able to do jobs but C-levels laying off people and creating unemployment nonetheless
• C-levels forcing people to use “AI” for the express purpose of training it to do their jobs so they can be laid off
• The goddamned pile of lies upon lies gaslighting us into believing this is to make our lives better.
• Ignoring the loss of jobs, all the supposed savings from “AI” goes to the top; shit isn’t getting any less expensive. It’s even getting more expensive to take a literal shit; the water and poo plants run on electricity, and those risings costs get passed down.

I mean… tbf the USA is a lot more homogenized than Europe

Eh, agree to a point. While our federal structure is more unifying than, say, the EU, we’re still pretty diverse at a region, state, city, and often even small-town scale. Even in my podunk shithole of a state.

I’m likening Europe or even just the EU to the US with each country/member country analogous to a US state. I feel like that’s a pretty fair comparison.

What bothers me, and this seems more Eternal September than anything else, is how people treat what is happening in the USA as a uniquely USA-only problem

That too. I didn’t want to go on a rant, lol, so I stuck to my main gripe.

Television portrays this homogeneity as being fairly uniform, regardless of the fact that it is not.

Yeah. Believing everything you see on TV is a whole other can of worms. I don’t judge other countries by their trashy reality TV, so I often hope that’s a two way street.

It’s actually somewhat funny in a way: whereas on Reddit it was legitimately true, here on Lemmy the USA-centeredness effect seems mainly some Europeans being mad at other Europeans, as some want to share e.g. news about the USA

Yep. Noticed that, too. People complaining about “All 'Muricans think everyone everywhere has to care about their news all the time and flood everything with it” while ignoring the fact that a very large chunk of those are posted by non-Americans for whatever reason (often just to shit on us).

how many bad actors there are across the Threadiverse, spinning up bot accounts or even human ones to amplify some things and decry others. So I am ignoring that here and just focusing on what seems a genuine disagreement.

Yeah, I have tools to filter some of that out and am focusing on established accounts.

it is far easier to complain than to work to actually solve any problem.

Can I get that on a throw pillow or cross-stitch?

I realize you’re probably not serious, but, still, voter disenfranchisement is both a slippery slope and a tactic employed by those everyone calls fascists. Two wrongs do not make a right and all that.

It is a nice and legit Mason jar (actually has the “Mason” embossed at the top).

I just dug mine out because I wanted to smell it; thankfully it was where I thought it was. After several years, it mostly just smells like strawberry slushee now but there are still hints of the original nostalgic smell.

Warm cashews, strawberry, and buttery popcorn also known as the “Hill’s Snack Bar” smell. I always remember that smell associating with getting a new toy or picking out a birthday present.

There’s a novelty candle that tried and largely succeeded at recreating that smell, and I bought one several years ago. I still have half of it left, but it got buried in a box when I moved and is probably still there.

Stock picture, but mine looks exactly like this:

I’ve used SA for over 10 years and am happy with it. It’s a bit of a pain to get set up and set to train, but otherwise still works well for me.

I’ve also heard good things about rspamd but I still haven’t even tried it out yet.

Nothing. We’re a country of ~350 million diverse people who believe lots of different things. And this question seems in very bad faith from a 21 minute old account.

“Computer! I demand you address me as an adult!”

Definitely take care of yourself and best wishes.

Instead of calling it “Minecraft” we’d have to call it “Generic Danish children’s pixelated building block software”

Lego, or as the BBC has to refer to it: “Generic Danish interlocking children’s building set.”

— Jason Manford

https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/qi/episodes/14/2/

It varies widely in my state. Until I moved, I couldn’t get anything above 768k DSL, spotty 3 Mbps 4G, or 25 Mbps highly-capped satellite (this was pre-Starlink). I tried all 3 but ended up using a 3G and eventually 4G hotspot until 2019 and managed a few Mbps on average.

I had Optimum (fiber to the node) from 2020 through 2023 and paid for 400/40 and generally got that in practice (even upload). In 2023 I switched to 1 Gbps symmetrical fiber to the home and it’s been everything I’ve always wanted. I think I can get up to 5 Gbps now if I want it, but honestly, I rarely saturate my current one. And it costs about $10 more than I was paying for 400/40.

A good related question for this post would be how reliable is your home internet, and is your provider “Frontier”? lol.

I just keep supporting open source and following the forks as needed. Otherwise, I’m self-hosting what I can and going lo-fi where I can’t.

Also: !oldmanyellsatcloud@dubvee.org for all your “ranting about how modern tech sucks” needs.

I used to try to go back to sleep but I always seem to be in a REM cycle when my alarm goes off so I end up waking up even more tired, so lately I’ve just been getting up and finding something to do.

I have similar Flex time but I generally try to start at 8 because I prefer to have the extra free time in the evenings.

I just do a spritz onto a tack cloth

I pretty much use this stuff on everything. Spray it on the cloth, though, not the screen.

For the ports, I just use compressed air.

Yes, please!

The Titan 2 Elite looks awesome though it appears to be just a render right now. I was looking at the original Titan a while back but it was pretty dated even then. Gonna keep an eye out for the Elite.

The phone will come powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 processor, have 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of internal storage. There is no word on the display or the battery, but going by the previous release, it should be an AMOLED screen, and the battery should be 5,000mAh. Neither is there any word about the release timeline, pricing, or other features of the device right now. The sole official render of the phone suggests a sleeker-looking body, erringly similar to the Clicks Communicator.

Yeah, man, you’ll get, like, totally faded.

— Charles Darwin

— Michael Scott