If this were real, one of the kids who admits they have no idea what they’re doing would have already, quite confidently, stolen a pair of scissors from god knows where, cut out every single square, then arranged them in numerical order. Only THEN would they admit to not knowing wtf they’re doing.

Until they sell that data to your auto insurance company.

Okay, what helps? Standing outside Starbucks, Walmart, amazon warehouses, anywhere non-union, and spend your time trying to convince their workers to join a union. There’s a reason that, when the Nazis took over, “First they came for the Trade Unionists”. Don’t say nothing. Let’s Make More Trade Unionists

Whoo boy. The Proton CEO posted a deeply troubling remark praising trump and republicans as the champions of the little guy, and lambasted democrats for being in the pocket of big tech. This, understandably, seemed rather… icky to a great many people, who dislike the idea of the service they trust for privacy kissing the ring of the Fascist in Chief/Putin’s Towelboy/Elon’s Hamberder Carrier. This might have been more palatable if it was made clear that Proton itself does NOT endorse the policies of Melon Husk’s puppet administration and the MAGAt Horde, and that the original post was made by the CEO in his capacity as a private citizen, and not as the CEO of Proton.

So when, in the face of backlash from the federated community, Proton decided to just leave the fediverse, rather than clarify its position, but stay on Reddit & the Xitter, using the half-baked excuse of “it’s too expensive for us to cross-post on this completely free system”, people, understandably, took this to indicate that Proton, previously one of the most trusted privacy companies, may not be as independent as its swiss headquarters leads one to believe.

Because caring about a thing and making a show of caring about the thing are two completely different things.

Unrepentantly stole this from episode 3 of the Magnus Archives. Listen to it, then listen to all of it. Everyone needs to listen to the Magnus Archives.

Edit:
I have been humbled, and shall pay my penance. Link is here: The Magnus Archives, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Sure, or there’s the alternative interpretation:

that’s not a pipe, and it was just staying still.

Hmm, interesting. I’ll have to consider other cases of this.

I posted this in a different comment thread on this post, but I would be interested to hear your perspective:

While they aren’t generally stylistically complex, some songs with complex nonsense lyrics seem, at least to me as a young American, to be the ones that are simultaneously easiest to appreciate for a great many people, and also have huge staying power, despite being quite old. For example:
American Pie
Hotel California
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Don’t Stop Believing
Bohemian Rhapsody (or, really, most things by Queen)
These, at least among the places I’ve been here in America, are the ones to which everyone in the bar starts singing along. Sure, these have underlying meaning, or make references to specific events, but in my experience, most of the people I hear singing and dancing to these have no idea what they’re referencing, and often don’t even know the words. Perhaps it is simply that they are so overplayed that they get those “multiple listens” of which you speak? Or is there something inherently compelling in the seeking of meaning in complex, random lyrics, such that people are immediately drawn in?

While they aren’t generally stylistically complex, some songs with complex nonsense lyrics seem, at least to me as a young American, to be the ones that are simultaneously easiest to appreciate for a great many people, and also have huge staying power, despite being quite old. For example:
American Pie
Hotel California
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Don’t Stop Believing
Bohemian Rhapsody (or, really, most things by Queen)

These, at least among the places I’ve been here in America, are the ones to which everyone in the bar starts singing along. Sure, these have underlying meaning, or make references to specific events, but in my experience, most of the people I hear singing and dancing to these have no idea what they’re referencing, and often don’t even know the words. Perhaps it is simply that they are so overplayed that they get those “multiple listens” of which you speak? Or is there something inherently compelling in the seeking of meaning in complex, random lyrics, such that people are immediately drawn in?

Some possible words for which you might have been searching: didactic, diagetic

Thank you for the clarification! I was wondering if you meant literal shrinking, like telomeres, but over generations. I retract my former complaint!

To call the natural process of mutation, literally one of the requirements for any genetic evolutionary progress, “deteriorating” is, at best, short sighted. Most mutations do nothing, most of the ones that do something don’t occur in the one sperm that makes it into the ovum, and most of those that do something and make it into the ovum cause an early termination before birth. Some of those that get through all of these hurdles are the ones that cause random genetic variation and increased diversity, without which we actually DO get things like Hemophilia or other sex-linked issues going rampant in any given gene pool. Evolution takes a LONG time to work, but it requires wet and moldable clay to sculpt.

I’m sorry, who said Meta was ever the good guy, let alone its shitstain of a CEO? Implementing too-little-too-late consolation fact-checking for a little bit doesn’t excuse waving the flag as THE vanguard of misinformation-as-internet-discourse in mainstream social media.

Ringwoodite inclusions in a diamond recently (last decade or so) revealed that water exists in equilibrium with the deep mantle, far deeper than previously thought possible. This has completely changed our understanding of the chemistry of the deep interior of the earth.

Don’t forget the perfect octahedral cleavage and unique lustre!

Bold of you to assume they’ll let anything like rules tie them down.

If you thought this was promoting suicide, you either don’t understand the connotation of a guillotine, or have been living under a rock for… <checks notes> the last hundred years

Yeah, if you’ve ever read Cloud Atlas, it makes me wonder if David Mitchell was friends with a former collaborator of Zimmer’s (or if the industry is so rife with such problems), because the way Zimmer appears to operate and aggrandize himself sure does have a whiff of Vyvyan Ayrs…

So, compare this contemporary review, which makes it clear (including a quote from Zimmer himself!) that while Zimmer, Djawadi, and others contributed leitmotifs and notes, the majority of composition was Badelt’s. Now consider Zimmer’s website’s description, which invariably paints himself as the main composer of nearly every track, even claiming the title of primary composer, and seems to erase the contributions of Badelt at every opportunity.

So, I take any claims of Zimmer’s greatness with a giant salt lick. I originally read another source (which I now am unable to locate) that claimed the only thing Zimmer wrote for the DaVinci Code was the main theme motif, much like “He’s a Pirate” for the first pirates movie. I now generally assume that anything excellent “composed” by Zimmer was some other collaborator’s work, Zimmer offered a chord or two, then used his ill-gotten fame to bully the less-famous collaborators to accept the title of second fiddle while Zimmer mimes the Solo in the spotlight.