One thing I do — and it sounds like you may have tried a version of this — is take media breaks (social media included). Go camping, read fiction, play video games or whatever floats your boat. You’ll almost always find that nothing major has changed and you were just dwelling on things beyond your control.

I’m not saying stick your head in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong. I’m more saying you can keep just as informed without wallowing in the news slop.

I know it’s just a transport aircraft but $4.5m seems like a pretty square deal for a military plane.

Also, a Pennsylvania Senator thought a fake TIE Fighter strapped to a trailer was a drone that crashed. It’s silly season.

Given that the former Governor of Maryland mistook the constellation Orion for a drone, I’m going with mass hysteria as my theory of choice.

RIP to the scooter. Mourn ya till I join ya.

This will no doubt go poorly but hey, when a government experiment goes poorly, what choice do you have.

Israel sells surveillance software to everyone. That’s probably their main source foreign currency besides the worst hummus at any grocery.

This isn’t anti-semitism, for the record. I’m criticizing Israel’s IT sector, specifically (and Sabra), for being too focused on selling zero-day exploits to police and spy agencies. It’s despicable and needs to be stopped or we’re all worse off. All zero-day viruses discovered by any government agency should be reported immediately to the company. Especially in a “democracy.” But especially in a democracy.

I literally put several caveats in the text saying it wasn’t representative of Afghanistan as a whole.

Just a reminder of what Kabul was like in 1972 before…well, it’s complicated. The Soviet and American wars didn’t help but there was a trend towards religious nationalism before either. And those were probably wealthy, urban women. But they didn’t get arrested for having books and wearing skirts. Human rights can backslide faster than you’d think, given the right conditions.

I think this whole concept speaks to how differently we all use social networks. For some, it’s a passive news source. For others, it’s entertainment. For others, it’s a place to be social.

Ideological balance is the least important feature for me in picking a social network. I’m there to joke around and talk to interesting people. In real life, my friends and I don’t go “You know what bar we should go to? That new ideologically balanced one down on 2nd St.” (and then my horny friend says we should go to the bar where he met a hot girl once and we end up at TikTok¹, AGAIN).

¹ That’s a joke. I’m 40 and my friends pick bars based on proximity, beer selection, and how long they have the baby sitter for.

I’m not a liberal — I’m a leftist — and I consider a Tankie to be someone who gets so wrapped up in hating the U.S. or West in general that they start defending the likes of Stalin and others who used a facade of Marx/Lenin to consolidate power and do horrible things. Like, you do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Stalin.

Incidentally, here’s Thomas the Tankie Engine:

I made that for a shitpost in 5 minutes using Midjourney so don’t judge all the obvious A.I. flaws or that I used machine learning. I’d pay a real artist if it wasn’t a throwaway bit.

Fuck Meta but 16 seems a little bit old just because of the enforcement challenges. I’m not arguing social media is good for 14 and 15 year-olds. I’m just saying they’re often clever little shits who systematically test boundaries. They’re like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

Basically, I think a better strategy would be something like a ban for 13 and under. Then, a harm reduction strategy for 14-17 year-olds. Like maybe sequester them. They don’t want adults on their timeline anyway and (normal) adults don’t really want teens on theirs. Maybe allow them to follow approved pop stars and athletes or something but not random adults.

Basically, social media training wheels for older teens so they develop some social media literacy before they’re just tossed into the cesspool of adult social media.

I don’t know that the relatively anodyne descriptor “conservative commentator” and simply “visa” are strong enough to provide an accurate portrayal of the situation. (The article goes more into it; I’m referring to the lede.) She wasn’t going scuba diving and visiting the Sydney Opera House on a tourist visa. She was applying for a work visa and she’s apparently frequently crossed the line into holocaust denial. A lot of countries wouldn’t grant that visa.

I don’t really know much about her — I just read bits of her Wikipedia article — but to me, this sounds more like denying Alex Jones a work visa than something like banning a random “conservative commentator” like Megyn Kelly from visiting Aukland on holiday.

I can’t imagine a full-scale war with Iran would end in Israeli victory. Iran’s population is 10 times that of Israel’s. It’s mountainous too. They don’t share a border. There’s no way Israel could do any sort of significant ground invasion even if the IDF wasn’t already stretched thin fighting on multiple fronts.

I’m not saying Iran would be the big “winner.” I’m saying no one would win. Both countries would probably just indiscriminately bomb the shit out of each other and everyone — especially civilians — would be worse off after.

I should probably pre-apologize for that joke. I don’t play a lot of fantasy games and I don’t really know what gets summoned. I promise, though, I’m a big enough nerd for Lemmy. I have 3 telescopes and probably every Raspberry Pi model if we look through the drawers in my soldering desk.

I should probably pre-apologize for this joke too.

But what if they summon 2 healing elves and a mighty centaur back? What are you gonna do then, Elon?

I know regions of India and China would be considered “developing” by any standard but as a country, if you’re doing fucking moon missions on homegrown rockets, you don’t need foreign aid.

There’s not that many bots yet and people are big into blocking (and you can subscribe to block lists so it’s automatic). I’m sure as it grows, bot traffic will too — it’s seemingly inevitable — but 20 million users isn’t really that much compared to legacy platforms. I think is mostly news because lots of people are fleeing X due to the election.

If you think “being in charge” and “urging” are incompatible, I would encourage you to talk to someone with young kids who think chicken nuggets and Frozen are the only acceptable dinner/movie options.

Knowing a human made it is the point. To be crude, if a sex doll is your girlfriend, you’re single.