Someone pointed out, the debate was scheduled for 9pm, with two men over 70. I’m in my 50’s, and I’m no good after 8pm. This should have been held in the morning.

The debate was poorly arranged, and once again Biden’s incompetent staff contributed by letting it happen.

The top YouTube comment hit the nail on the head, though: the problem is that 49 million people didn’t watch the Carolina rally.

Yeah, it’d have to be a Lemmy design change, and then all of the many clients would have to implement it… momentum is a powerful force in the software world, and difficult and dangerous to overcome. Look at the fiasco of Python 3; that was a cock-up of epic proportions. Lemmy’s got enough users and clients now that changes have to be made extremely carefully.

which is what I’d wager many think of when you say “the Internet”

I wager you’d be right, but most people are wrong.

I’m saying that everything is built on foundations that are fundamentally English and American, and this influenced even Berners-Lees’s creation. HTTP and HTML were fundamentally ASCII. DNS and the WWW eventually evolved broader encoding support, but it’s clearly tacked-on and awkward. All you need to do is look at URL encoding rules as proof.

I’m not saying it’s right; I’m just saying there consequences of an English, American-centric design of what underlies all computer technology today is evident at all higher levels, no matter how hard we try to mask them.

They need a “follow accounts” button here. Like if a reporter used

Thank you!

And: dude! I have totally thought the same thing! It’s so weird that Mastodon has follow-accounts, but no communities; Lemmy has join-communities but no follow-accounts; and they’re both ActivityPub. You’d think that would be a no-brainer feature, right?

You need to accept the fact that you are AI generated.

On the plus side, it’s proof you’re living in a simulation!

I think most non-Southerners’ exposure to it is in media, where it’s almost always racist in context. There’s a surprising amount of subtly in Southern social interactions that I think it’s missing from most of the US. Sure, Midwesterners are known for raising passive-aggressiveness to an art form, but you recognize it no matter where you’re from.

The subtly in social interactions in the South are truly exceptional, hard to get a handle on, and unmatched anywhere else in the US - IMHO. Southerners have as many ways of being condescending as Eskimos have words for snow.

Is that phrase still acceptable, or is the Eskimo/snow comment now not PC? Is it still OK to use the term “Eskimo?” If the Eskimo thing is offensive, I sincerely apologize. An alternative would be “as North-westerners have words for rain,” but I don’t know if that’s as widely understood an idiom.

The internet originated in the US. All of the original specs were made by Americans. ASCII is literally built around English, and ASCII is at the foundation of every single core technology of the internet. Hell, even when they designed UTF-8, it was still Western-centric; to this day it gets some push back from the Orient, because it’s makes things harder for them - I think there was a fight to standardize on UTF-16 because it was easier for Asian languages; I may not be remembering the details correctly, but there’s some legitimate beef some Asian languages have with UTF-8.

Now, obviously, more non-Americans are on the internet than Americans, but it’s the same argument as Critical Race Theory: when the entire foundation and infrastructure is built on a bias, that bias influences all interactions even when isn’t overtly obvious, or even intentional.

It’s always demeaning. Calling a full-grown man of any race “boy” is belittling them. Yes, there’s a special racist association, but it’s been used as much on white men. The female equivalent might be “little girl.”

“What do you think you’re doing, little girl?”

It might have the same effect as simply “girl” if said the right way, but “girl” has been more normalized and sexualized, so it’s a little different.

Anyway, the terms are belittling, and therefore demeaning, regardless of race. The point of using them is to position yourself over that person, as a parent over a child; it’s shorthand for saying they are beneath you.

“… that meltdown, boy.”

You’re doing it, I say, you’re doing it wrong, boy.

Anybody following this able to give a balanced summary? I find The Hill to tend right-leaning and don’t much trust their analysis.

The Hill seems to be placing the defeat of Bowman on his stance against the genocide in Palestine, which is becoming a sort of dog-whistle saying, “stand against the invasion of Palestine, and this is what happens to you.” It may in this case be true; I can believe it, but I don’t trust The Hill to not be constructing a narrative.

Mm hmm… Hmmm hmmm… Wait

And the military is just sitting on its hands.

what? What should the military be doing?

That last one is the biggest goddamn cherry I’ve ever seen on top.

Of course not. Aliens don’t use slavery.

I get as frustrated as anyone else at the often glacial pace of justice. I’ve been told that it’s all in a good cause, that slow means careful and the best chance at just outcomes.

While I mostly believe this, my doubts stem from the fact that “justice” seems to be awfully stern and quick when the accused is poor, or a minority, and seems to only really becomes slow and careful when the rich, and especially the rich white, are accused. And the rich get to live in “house arrest” while the system cautiously, and protractedly, protects their rights. I have a difficult time reconciling that.

PS, I know you’re talking about Crowder, not the public. It just got me thinking.

Yeah, me neither. I’ve liked some horror genre stories, like Clive Barker’s Book(s?) of Blood, Rawhead Rex and all; but I wouldn’t say it was because it made me afraid.

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say a lot of people do, or else slasher flicks wouldn’t be so popular. Hell, some years it seems as if that’s the only genre of movies released.

But, I also loath the cringe inducing reality shows many people love; and I’m so very tired of every show having to be nonstop angst and tension: GoT was the pinnacle of this, and I absolutely hated it. Books and TV. Boardwalk Empire was so frustrating, because it so well written, acted, and produced, but I just can’t stand the unrelieved tension. Obviously, a took of people do, or else there’d be more diversity in media. It’s like, the one tool media writers know how to use, anymore.

I say all this because I wonder if there’s a correlation: what’s the overlap between people who don’t like being jump-scared or otherwise frightened and the people who don’t like watching people being made uncomfortable (a-la Borat); or constantly bickering (The Kardashians). I love action movies, and a good adventure sci-fi or fantasy, so I’m not adverse to conflict, but I won’t watch Breaking Bad because - while I’m aware it was an excellent series - I also know it’s going to be a non-stop angst-fest, like The Sopranos.

It’d be an interesting survey. Maybe a list of shows and movies with a simple “enjoy/don’t enjoy”, and secretly ranked by dominant emotional manipulation. Is it an endearing love story tinged with bittersweet? A slasher? A torture-tension (what’s Saw? Not a slasher). See how people are grouped.

I’m afraid you’ve angered me, Sir!

(I didn’t downvote you - it wasn’t me!)

Yeah. I think anything that passes time by giving you dopamine hits qualifies as a game. However, that wasn’t my point. I was saying, you declared a statement, and then when given counter-examples, declare they aren’t really games because they don’t meet your previously declared statement. It’s a logical fallacy.

I would argue those are not really games though.

You were doing well until the No Real Scotsman fallacy.

Insurance companies in the US often exhibit paradoxical behavior based entirely on statistics and ignoring individual case details.

Often a less expensive procedure will be denied until after a more expensive procedure is performed, guaranteeing that insurance has to pay for both, just because some significant percent of patients need the more expensive procedure either way.

Health insurance is utterly stupid, and mainly because it’s a for-profit, private enterprise in the US. Data goes in and a decision comes out, and the insurance companies really only care as long as the algorithm results in a net profit over time. Good outcomes for patients isn’t even a consideration.