They know they have a hardcore of 20-30% of hardcore personality cult followers, and those are around the kinds of numbers you need to sustain a dictatorship.

The US right now is operating outside of the constitution - it is basically no longer the US. Constitutional crisis of the president ignoring the judicial branch aside, congress is doing nothing to step in as the majority of its members are majority sycophants who are just doing what they are told so they can remain in the good graces and get rich easily, and all major institutional heads of the federal government have been replaced with loyalists and an agency that is basically operating outside of the government and painting only a surface level facade to make it seem as if it operating as part of it is accessing all governmental data and syphoning off through Starlink to who knows what datacenters off somewhere.

Perhaps the worst thing isn’t that the US is no longer operating under its constitution, but how little the constitution was worth to all the people who pledged their loyalties to it just to step aside and let this happen. The modern US seems to have been operating under none of the foundations they persistently virtue signaled about, apparently, and it was largely all built out of a patriotic hype bubble in the end.

We live in an era where media with certain themes always seem to get an absurd amount of negativity, with plenty of dumbasses to blindly follow it without ever thinking to stopping and thinking about where a lot of it is coming from.

I don’t know why they are so worried, Trump has toppled all the heads of government agencies with loyalists. They will be well prepared to finish their transition towards authoritarianism in the midterms, although they will have a lot more to worry about before they even get there.

Game companies can get my sympathy when wages begin to keep up with inflation. Otherwise, it belongs to the pirates and emus. You can “it’s not their fault” all the way to “doesn’t matter, it’s still my problem”.

The only thing you’ve argued is that you are choosing one particular definition of smart, ignoring the one I was using, and going all Grammar Nazi into how that’s the only possible definition. As I’ve said, if I am grateful for one thing, it is that I am not one of those people whose ego ^{is shallow enough to} has ^/have to be jizzing everywhere, including their perception of things.

Democrats hemorrhaging support despite that support not being in favor of Republicans is what already cost them the elections, and they are the sort to more easily fall prey to propaganda meant to dissuade them from participating.

They are. Unless you can translate what I’m saying to any language I tell you to on the fly, I’m going to assume that anyone that tells me they are smarter than LLMs are lower on the spectrum than usual. Wikipedia and a lot of libraries are also more knowledgeable than me, who knew. If I am grateful for one thing, it is that I am not one of those people whose ego has to be jizzing everywhere, including their perception of things.

The fact that approval ratings for Trump are still as high as they are while the approval for the only other far, far, far lesser evil you can vote, the Democrats, is sinking, does not give me any hope whatsoever for the US, were I naive enough to believe that the next elections that matter could come soon enough or that they would still remain legitimate. The US no longer has a trace of Democracy except for the mask it wears, it is at the same or even lower level than Russia’s.

They are as cyclical as people are cyclical for falling for confidence scams again and again and again … You can consider something based on how good an investment it is, or based on how ethical it is. Very seldom will both work out. People, don’t cry about the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, assholes behaving more like assholes, and inflation skyrocketing when you normalize and even crowdsource this sort of relationship with your economy. Don’t be surprised when the society that surrounds you is so burnout all you have to spend your money on is shit.

• Make America poor again.
• Get people used to the idea of being poor but make someone else take the blame for it.
• Bring back marginal improvements after people have gotten used to being poor.
• TADA! America Made Great Again!

Hey, it’s not my fault replying to these people requires low effort.

Imagine dreaming to fly to space only to be denied having it because you also cared about the rights of indigenous people.

I don’t think you realize just how fast lead acid batteries deteriorate when using their smaller charge capacities. In cars and many electronics they are used because they can be shamelessly charged to 100%, and they are supposed to maintain 100% or close to it. They require constant monitoring to be stored properly in a way that lasts. Using them up below 50% will decrease their lifespan significantly. Lithium batteries are quite different, they shouldn’t be charged to 100% but in turn they can use a greater amount of their charge while holding more of it without significant deterioration. They have significantly longer lifespans when used properly. Before we had gasoline cars we had electric cars that used lead acid batteries, there’s a reason they stopped being used.

What China wants to do is eliminate the older lithium ebikes because they were built with barely any safety regulation. To do this, they need to offer a cheaper option to their citizens, and the only way they can essentially do this without the original problem persisting is using lead acid batteries, because even a cheap lead acid battery with a cheap charger isn’t going to fail spectacularly like the lithium ones. LiFePO4 are far safer than lithium while still having higher energy densities, but you won’t see those get promoted because they would be costlier.

So what? Either reason is bad.

There’s a name for that. It’s called “karma”.

I tried to ask it how I could remove it, Gemini told me that in order for me to help it I needed to active some of the “smart” features I didn’t have active on my account, essentially helping do the opposite. It follows the ever increasing practice of trying to shove basically illegal behavior into “it’s just the algorithm, bro, there was no intent!”

I have no idea why that would be surprising or I should care.

Their claims regarding privacy are really not surprising, it’s very on-brand for the developer’s ideology to eliminate transparency for users in the platform while keeping everything stored and federated in the back end for the ruling elite, which if and when they decide to, become the arbiters of who can and won’t see it. They haven’t even bothered to provide any form of recourse to contest it, you basically have to go looking for people yourself. At least until mod member lists are made private too.

I fully agree with their decision, Lemmy is transient at best. They could still include Mbin, but why include a loaded deck? Actually, decided to check, yep, they did, kudos to them, they really did think it through.

Downvote all you want, still ain’t gonna change that jointhefediverse.net decision (based as fuck) 😂

If you satirically make a community about the Earth being a triangle, users who actually believe it will pop up eventually.

In other words, they be searching for new jobs.