I was pretty young at the time, but the thing that I always think about is the movie Enemy of the State when I think about 9/11. Because before the attack, the general narrative was that we need to be worried about what power we give our government and how much they spy on their people and how far they are willing to go to maintain power. I think about Tomorrow Never Dies a lot too, where a media mogul tries to control world governments and people by controlling the news. I was maybe 7 or 8 when the later came out, but I always remember them in terms of 9/11 because after that attack, both movies started to become prescient. The internet was the only thing that kept me informed on what was really going on in the world. Now even that’s changing.

It wasn’t just 9/11. There’s nuance to what they do that gets lost in translation. The most 1-to-1 for me would be Pearl Harbor.

No one from the US planned the Pearl Harbor attack, but it is believed by some that Roosevelt made policy decisions that goaded Japan into attacking the US as a means of gaining support for entering WWII.

No one in the US administration planned 9/11. What is today framed as incompetence was clearly stonewalling from people in key places of power to allow an attack to manifest. It’s been years and I don’t remember everything I’ve ever heard that’s been debunked. I do remember the head of the CIA refusing to send intel to the FBI was a big sticking point. I think I remember there being a drill going on that day about hijacked planes that made communication confused. I still don’t get why building 7 went down, or why some claimed it was almost totally empty that day.

So too with Israel. HAMAS has been allowed to fester in Palestine by the top Israeli officials, going so far as to assassinate more moderate candidates and even smuggle in money to fund the organization. Israel has for a long time had what is considered one of the most sophisticated and robust information networks in the world. There is no way that at least grumbles of this attack were unknown.

I grew up through 9/11. I saw what patriotism does to people and what leaders use it for.

I watched so much scifi on Netflix back in the day. It was really an end of an era moment when they lost Star Trek and Stargate.

It’s not fully accurate to lay the blame at the feet of Netflix. At the time, they just saw the writing on the wall and did what they had to do to survive. Their catalog was massive because, early on, no one thought streaming would work. They had a massive collection of shows and movies that didn’t pull enough of an audience to air on TV for ad revenue. Netflix was able to get a TON of long-term deals that they used to grow, but when those contracts were coming due, the rights holders pulled out and started trying to make their own services. At that point, Netflix basically had to become a studio and pivot to original content, or else they wouldn’t have content at all.

The long and the short of it is that because Netflix was first, it got to set the stage for the golden age of streaming, but because it worked, it was inevitable that streaming would become cable.

It’s not Netflix’s fault. It’s just the course of the entertainment business. They suck now, but back then, I couldn’t think of a single bad thing to say about them… well, maybe that they got rid of the 5-star rating system. That system was definitely used to get metrics for their early programming.

The problem is that everyone’s internet experience is very different these days. Your friends might be boring and actually have nothing in their lives that need compartmentalized/obfuscated. It’s unlikely but not impossible.

The easiest way to demonstrate the problem would be when they show you something on an unprotected device you note the ads and give them shit for it. Those ads are likely targeted, and so your jabs would be targeted and personal too. Then point out that those ads are tied to THEM. Just ask every time, “have you been looking at X? Gross dude.” It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s the point that they are uncomfortable with your guess and it’s an opening to explain that, yeah it’s not just those ads buddy.

I bet you could make it with some creamy peanut butter and grape jelly

I wish they would have had more articulate people in that group. Tim Pool’s arguments in general fall apart under logic. The civil war stance especially.

Everyone was so caught up in pointing out the authoritarian stuff going on under trump that none of them actually addressed his claim. He’s going to go back to his platform to keep doing the same thing he’s always done, but they gave him sound bites to feed his base.

Any civil war requires resources and logistics on two sides that can equally opose each other. I would have liked to see someone push back on how that happens in an authoritarian surveillance state. I’d even grant him ‘unrest,’ but civil wars are is pretty much impossible. It’s just a matter of logistics. No group can realistically organize to military readiness to challenge current regime. They’re purging the military, setting up a surveillance state, and have been recruiting by way of ICE at least. This says nothing of the military hardware and training that is held at the federal level.

I get it, he would have just cut in and used half truths but it’s hard to bullshit the obvious. Unless you’re screaming.

I couldn’t watch this all the way through. Maybe it’s a moderate thing that they couldn’t be more articulate. or maybe the 20 were just awful picks for this.

He’s married with a child.

That specific talking point is because he’s one of those obfuscated friends of nazis.

I remember signing up for Reddit in my middle school library, way back when we were all still shitting on digg. It’s wild to have seen it fall so far.

It’s not a blank screen. It’s a canvas. You just don’t know how to paint.

Do they still put the latest releases in a .exe file?

cool to know! I think Smart and Final might be a regional thing because I’ve never heard of it. but yeah, one of the draw backs of Aldi is that when they get busy things get messy. In general, I love Aldi. It has it’s issues but overall the shittiness seems muted compared to the other big chain stores. I can at least afford the essentials from there and then, when I get special stuff, buy bulk.

I wish they carried butter beans though.

I’m sorry, but you must be a new Aldi shopper. The quarter thing has been their model for ages. Often, you or someone else will just leave a quarter in their cart when they put it back.

The self-checkout is new, but Aldi is one of those stores that actually does pass the savings on to its customers. It’s always 20–30% cheaper at Aldi than other stores in my area. The exception is big-name brand stuff, but the store brand is definitely cheaper. $4 for a 12-pack of knockoff Coke vs. $13 for the name brand at the other stores? It’s a no-brainer.

Edit: I’m not super current on it, but as I recall, Aldi does actually pay its workers well. It’s one of the places that has a reputation as “the good one.” I’m sure it’s not perfect, since it still operates in the U.S. economy, but Aldi has been up there with Costco for its business practices.

Lemmy isn’t perfect, but it is more honest than Reddit.

Lemmy’s problems stem mostly from tribalism, as different instance admins ban and censor anyone they don’t like. That makes the environment hostile to users who came here expecting to be able to speak their minds like they did in the old days of the internet.

The tribalism causes the niche communities of Reddit to generally steer clear of Lemmy because, even if you have the technical knowledge to get here, you may find that your fandom or interest is fractured between six or more instances, with three of them being defederated from the other three or being moderated with such heavy bias that the community is almost unusable. You can be shadow banned, silenced, or just plain banned from an instance at the whims of a bad admin, which is really disheartening. Reddit is a mess, but it’s all in one place still. With Lemmy, you honestly need multiple accounts on different instances, or else you have to choose between your favorite crochet communities or your favorite tech communities. Say one wrong thing, and suddenly you are robbed of interaction.

I love Lemmy. It reminds me of the Reddit of old. It’s also broken and sick. I had to be in five different Star Trek communities because my instance got targeted by vindictive admins. I have to have multiple accounts because some fandoms are locked into highly toxic communities. Some of the best queer memes I’ve laughed at were in a community that is outright pro-Russia and pro-fascism.

Reddit felt like a grand bazaar for a long time. You could find a community for everything, and it would be active. While there was drama, it usually boiled down to you having a new sub added to your list to interact with. Lemmy is more like the high school cafeteria. Everyone is cliquish, and even if you have something to add to the discussion about Stargate or TTRPGs, if you voiced the wrong opinion in a completely different space, then you can find yourself a digital pariah.

At least with old Reddit, the Reddit of 2010, that didn’t happen. We were still a community trying to run things the way Aaron Swartz envisioned. Even if you said something that upset people, the upvote system often allowed that comment to be judged by the community and not one person with an agenda. That’s what I miss. Being able to say something or share something and have the community decide its worth rather than a minority voice deciding what people should see and think. It happens on Reddit, and it happens here on Lemmy, just for different reasons.

I was going to mention this. If for no other reason than to make up for the fact that I was too lazy to switch and it eventually lead to me getting the boot from the private torrent community I was in. I’ll be switching to AirVPN and doing it right again soon.

Not entirely a scam in theory. Though we are currently in a period of unprecedented corruption that is so complicated and complete that it might as well be. Even 5 years ago, I would have attributed certain actions to protect the market as an attempt to protect everyone. The systems in place are such that if a stock company fails, it creates far-reaching market upsets across industries worldwide. Essentially, if something fails, it takes everyone down with them.

The fix would be the state taking control of those industries to allow them to stabilize. Unfortunately, most state actors are also tied economically to those systems. That is, they’re corrupt as fuck and don’t care about people, but their own money and status.

So retirement funds and entitlements weren’t entirely a scam, but they are mostly so now. I doubt I will see a dime of mine if I don’t use it soon for school, expating, or buying a house. I certainly won’t see it when I retire.

I have some basic understanding of finance (and I mean basic), so take this as an observation rather than investment advice. If your retirement plan allows you to change your asset allocation, and you have a high-conviction thesis that a significant market event is about to occur, it may be worth temporarily rotating from a growth-oriented allocation into a more conservative allocation to reduce downside exposure.

Under normal circumstances, attempting to time the market is a bad idea, and financial advisors or plan managers will usually push you away from doing so. However, there are rare situations where it’s clear as crystal what’s happening. In those cases, reducing equity exposure and increasing allocations to lower-volatility assets for a short period may be a reasonable risk-management decision.

Using the recent SpaceX-related market activity as an example, I find it difficult to believe that any fund with a genuinely conservative mandate would have maintained meaningful exposure to assets directly affected by that event. A conservative portfolio, by definition, should prioritize capital preservation over aggressive growth and generally avoid concentrated exposure to higher-risk investments.

You generally can’t tell them, “I don’t want this stock,” when dealing with index funds, but you can get yourself out of the fund entirely while it’s poisoned. Unfortunately, my company was changing providers right when the SpaceX shit was happening, and I couldn’t make the change myself.

I haven’t been keeping up with the bond market but last I heard it was it’s own shit show so I’m not really sure anything is ‘safe’ these days.