I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question but it felt relevant. When dealing with X what is the better strategy, trying to circumvent the BS with tools like nitter or abandoning the platform all together?

I know there is still a critical mass of users, including a lot of institutional accounts, there and stories often break on the platform so anyone migrating to Bluesky or Mastodon would lose access to that, but are there other practical benefits to continued use of X?

I was prescribed lithium by a psychiatrist a while back and she asked me if I'd ever heard of it before. I jokingly mentioned this song and she had to stop the session and look up the lyrics and then read the first couple verses aloud before realizing the song was kind of a bummer.

For the most part the terror is theoretical. As others have mentioned there is no practical difference between surveillance companies and three letter agencies, there is a revolving door of employees and information between the two and almost no sunlight between them. Having said that the dystopian fears of misuse are well founded, but as of yet mass surveillance has only really been publicly misused on the personal level. Cops and agents using flock to stalk people, local law enforcement using them in oppressive ways, but we haven't yet seen it applied at scale.

Realistically, those tools allow for heavy handed control, but Americans are still Americans, they need to be coaxed into being okay with large groups being rounded up for exercising their right to free speech. That's really where the true danger lies. The Algorithm heavily shapes the opinions of the masses and it is currently and actively being used to do just that. I could write extensively about the how's, why's, and who's but that's way beyond the scope of your question. Suffice it to say the feed controls the shape of the debate so that there are only two sides when in reality there are dozens for each issue. Just ask yourself when was the last time you saw a post suggesting cutting military spending or getting rid of gendered sports in favor of weight and height based groupings?

Canada has rejected several as unacceptable.

Just several? I know international agreements often have provisions like these, but almost every single one of those seems like a complete non-starter. Maybe the one about military spending might not hurt Canada too much, especially considering the US under MAGA probably isn't the most reliable defense partner. Although it's hard to imagine anyone threatening Canada in the near future but the US.

The heart of a young boy when I had to tell him that aunt bel was out of spicy water (what he calls flavored, carbonated water).

To teach my nephews not let anyone tell them how to think or who to be and about malicious compliance and non-violent resistance and how they can apply that to gaining advantage with their parents to drive my MAGA little brother absolutely insane.

A bear walks into a bar and the bartender asks what the bear wants. The bear replies, "I'll have a gin and...tonic." The bartender looks confused and asks, "what's with the big pause." The bear looks at the bartender and says, "well I'm a bear."

Out of curiosity I searched around for the amount of people killed by buses over time, the classic not-paying-attention death, and it seems like the number has been fairly stable since 2000.

My hypothesis was that if people were getting less good at paying attention that number should rise. One factor I couldn't control for is people becoming more aware of being hit by a bus and being more alert in that specific situation. That would also explain the stability of the number as the population has risen quite a bit since 2000 but the bus fatality rate has remained the same, which might imply the bus death per 100,000 would actually be going down. I also didn't look at the rate of injury, so safety technology could be shifting more fatalities to non-fatal injuries.

Either way the bus data does not suggest that people are paying more or less attention than they always have. Further research is required as the results were inconclusive.

I'm kind of over all these articles saying the world is soaked in gasoline and someone is about to strike a match. I feel like every day for the past 10 years at least we have been on the verge of some societal collapse-level catastrophe and it never fucking happens. Quit edging the apocalypse and just get it over with. Let it burn so we can get to rebuilding better.

Nietzsche wrote about it, but I think a term from the SCP Foundation sums it up nicely: some information about our world poses a memetic hazard. If you see the world clearly enough you are forever changed, and not in a good way. Knowledge is not power, it's a burden you can't put down that no one can help you with.

I wonder what if that would be enough to qualify for asylum in Canada or elsewhere for a trans person facing jail time in Texas.

I had a friend in highschool who claimed to sleep better listening to metal like Cradle of Filth and Powerman 5000. I crashed at his place a few times and he would put the music on loud, like had to yell to be heard over it loud. Not a chance I could fall asleep like that but he was snoring by the time I decided seeming cool and going along wasn't as valuable as good sleep. He lived in a detached guest house in the backyard, so I guess his parents never noticed.

Do you have any more information you could share? Maybe about who's behind it or signals to watch out for between now and then? You probably wouldn't want to share it but your source would be useful so we could independently verify it. It would be terrible if people started making plans around unverified information.

This is an absolutely amazing idea. If the US takes control of the strait it would mean mad cash money for our most important citizens: billionaires. And with California gone those damned democrats would never hold the presidency again and we could live in the fascist hellscape utopia every American dreams of. Shame about Hollywood though, I don't think the Iranians would appreciate the phenomenal propaganda powers the major studios wield.

They do, but the alliances are unstable. The problem is in determining what you mean by compete. Militarily that's next to impossible. The advanced weaponry the US, Russia, and China can wield requires an advanced technological society to produce. Many smaller countries just don't have the infrastructure, and worse would be hard pressed to access the materials to make them. Even fpv drones, like the Ukrainians are using against Russia, require advanced computing technologies that take decades to develop internally. But unless the countries have all of the materials within their borders they'd have to trade for it and be at the whim of the superpowers who control most of the world's supply. The science is available for much of the tech with maybe a 20 year lag time, with more current science being highly controlled and classified.

Economically there is more leeway. If the allied countries had natural resources or cheap labor they could trade that with other nations, but some resources such as oil, lithium, and rare earth metals pose an serious and deadly risk for any government looking to leverage them on a global market. Dozens of countries across the world have been destabilized and overthrown by the CIA alone, nevermind the 20 or so countries the US has directly invaded and dismantled for favorable oil trading.

Realistically a small group of countries allied together is the same as the individual countries going it alone. You'd need a larger alliance that is continent scale to have any real power when dealing with the superpowers. But even that is no guarantee as the US/EU relationship demonstrates. Without military strength the alliance would have no hard power to wield on the world's stage. Any nascent alliance would have to overcome meddling from the CIA/FSB/MSS if they started to become successful and threaten superpower interests.

Realistically the only countries on Earth that are sovereign are the superpowers, the rest are subject to their demands.

I'd actually say bus fatalities probably isn't a good data set to use if you wanted to do like actual research about it. There are too many variables that easily accessed public data doesn't cover. Like you'd want to filter accidents caused by the driver or another vehicle, the number of buses in circulation over time, demographics of the victims, among others.

Someone has that data, but it's probably specific to a city. Additionally there are entire classes of people with near zero chance of being hit by a bus, such as people living in rural areas and people who mostly travel during hours buses aren't running, like 3rd shifters in cities with a limited bus program.

In a lengthy Substack article — which he titled “A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies” — Moore wrote that Mangione’s alleged mention of him has resulted in requests for the director to comment. “It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer,” he wrote. “My phone has been ringing off the hook which is bad news because my phone doesn’t have a hook. Emails are pouring in. Text messages. Requests from many in the media.”

Moore went on to write that many of the requests inquired whether he would condemn the murder of Thompson. “After the killing of the CEO of United HealthCare, the largest of these billion dollar insurance companies, there was an immediate OUTPOURING of anger toward the health insurance industry,” Moore wrote. “Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them.”

He went on to write that the anger is completely justified, and that “it is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I’m not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger.”

Moore added that “yes, I condemn murder, and that’s why I condemn America’s broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry and I condemn every one of the CEOs who are in charge of it and I condemn every politician who takes their money and keeps this system going instead of tearing it up, ripping it apart, and throwing it all away.”

It's hard to imagine the guy who directed the music video for Rage Against the Machine's Sleep Now In The Fire saying anything else.

If CEO's are the problem why would you buy DDD merch from a dragon? Seriously, if you want performative swag hit the thrift store and make that sh!t yourself.

We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.

As a trans person I really appreciate the existential dread and emotional violence of the quality reporting at the Onion. It's a shame they can't solely cover how awful and despicable we all are.

Just the other day I was at an elementary library passing out copies of Fucking Trans Women to any male presenting children wearing jerseys or religious symbols. After words I went to a women's restroom to find victims to groom and assault.

Someone needs to hold us accountable and I am grateful the Onion has taken up the mantle.

Alternate title: The Tech Burnout