That’s composing quite an edifice of unprovable postulation to reverse engineer faith. “A” for effort!

Yup. The requirement of “faith” is a sure sign of charlatanism.

It’s a funny thing, when you think about it. If you were truly God, you wouldn’t need to prove it; you could just make it so everyone believes you.

Nicely put!

Reddit at least allowed blocking of trolls, whereas if we want that here, we will need to expend the effort to make that happen.

I don’t so much mind this, at least. It’s just curation, and I’d far rather have it in our hands than the hands of moderators or platform owners. Not that moderation isn’t useful, and hosting admins can still defederate - but giving users the ability to manage their own block lists, at the user, group, and instance levels, makes it less critical to have moderation, and makes moderation a little less prone to abuse.

Completely agree, except that I’d amend that no real conservative politicians exist. I think there are a lot of real conservatives - you named several - but that simply can’t get elected with our current election mechanisms. Primaries need to be eliminated. Progress like adoption of RCV needs to expand. The electoral college needs to be eliminated. If we can make progress in these areas, it’ll let moderate conservatives to regain control of their party. And it’d let people stop arguing and being frustrated with having to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Like most things, there’s a sliding scale. I block two instances (in my client) because of the high noise-to-signal ratio, and a few individuals who I find particularly obnoxious. I’ve never blocked anyone who I thought was trying to have a good-faith argument with me, regardless of their position. But I also don’t feel obligated to stand and listen to the MAGA dipshit shouting obscenities at minorities, either. Is it an echo chamber? No more than me not watching Fox “News”.

Although, Lemmy leans strongly left, and the instances are tankie ones; there isn’t a lot of right-leaning posting IME. I think this is a particularly difficult time for reasonable conservatives because of how their party has been co-opted by fascists. The instances I’m on doesn’t do a lot of defederating, but I know just by virtue of being on Lemmy, I’m getting a left bias.

The popular vote has some weight. Not enough to award Presidency, but it can be used in arguments for eliminating the electoral college, implement RCV, and other improvements. Narrowing the popular vote gap makes it harder to make these arguments.

Weight loss.

Both pretty names! I’m particularly fond of “Genevieve.”

I suspect there are several names no longer common in the US that are more common in other countries. I think “Genevieve” is still fairly common in France, and it’s making a comeback in the states! You’re doing your part!

“Boner” would be a fantastic name for a TV series about a grumpy orthopedist with a drug problem who’s always right. “It’s always osteoporosis” could be the tag line.

I never stopped calling it Twitter. X is a window manager, a letter of the alphabet, or the most algebraic variable name. It’s not a name for a company.

Seconded. OP, if you can write Markdown, Hugo will turn it into a website.

To maximize the number of people who show up at your funeral.

There are grammar Nazis, and fashion Nazis; PC Nazis, and good ol’ fashioned fascist Nazis; but my favorite Nazis are logic Nazis!

That’s probably the only content of value there, anymore.

Yes, if you log in, you can get in. I deleted my account, and every post and comment I’d ever made, when I left, and I’ll be damned before I create another account there.

No. They ban VPNs, so if I happen to follow a link that leads there, I get the “login to see this” page, shrug, and go somewhere else.

It’s easy to circumvent, but rarely worth the effort. The content was getting mostly shit-worthless even before I left. It’s only gotten worse.

There’s not useful, factual information on 4chan, these days.

Johnny Appleseed was a real guy, but he was doing his thing in the late 1700’s. Apples from grafting were pretty good eating, by then; trees grown from seed were mostly only good for making cider.

I think Android updates intentionally made the Pixel C slower. It was a noticeable process, up to the point they stopped supporting it. I’d downgrade to an earlier version, but there’s such poor support in Lineage, I’m barely able to run the version that’s on there now.

Such a shame, because it’s still an amazingly beautiful device.

I’m 100% with you. I want a Light Phone with a changeable battery and the ability to run 4 non-standard phone apps that I need to have mobile: OSMAnd, Home Assistant, Gadget Bridge, and Jami. Assuming it has a phone, calculator, calendar, notes, and address book - the bare-bones phone functions - everything else I use on my phone is literally something I can do probably more easily on my laptop, and is nothing I need to be able to do while out and about. If it did that, I would probably never upgrade; my upgrade cycle is on the order of every 4 years or so as is, but if you took off all of the other crap, I’d use my phone less and upgrade less often.

The main issue with phones like the Light Phone is that there are those apps that need to be mobile, and they often aren’t available there.

Sounds delicious