You can escape the . in a URL to break the markdown auto-linking: bit\.ly/customurl displays as:
bit.ly/customurl

There was a TED talk by Zeynep Tufekci in 2017 (“We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads”) – (YouTube*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI) that briefly talks about this:
(*I’m aware of the irony in linking there)

So in 2016, I attended rallies of then-candidate Donald Trump to study as a scholar the movement supporting him. I study social movements, so I was studying it, too. And then I wanted to write something about one of his rallies, so I watched it a few times on YouTube. YouTube started recommending to me and autoplaying to me white supremacist videos in increasing order of extremism. If I watched one, it served up one even more extreme and autoplayed that one, too. If you watch Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders content, YouTube recommends and autoplays conspiracy left, and it goes downhill from there.

Well, you might be thinking, this is politics, but it’s not. This isn’t about politics. This is just the algorithm figuring out human behavior. I once watched a video about vegetarianism on YouTube and YouTube recommended and autoplayed a video about being vegan. It’s like you’re never hardcore enough for YouTube.

So what’s going on? Now, YouTube’s algorithm is proprietary, but here’s what I think is going on. The algorithm has figured out that if you can entice people into thinking that you can show them something more hardcore, they’re more likely to stay on the site watching video after video going down that rabbit hole while Google serves them ads.

These days it might also be about politics, but the motivation to capture attention to serve ads is still the priority.

Billy likes to drink soda.
Miss Lippy’s car is green.

From The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu:

Later, other Adventists based their hatred of the human race on other foundations, not limited to issues such as the environment or warfare. Some raised their hatred to very abstract, philosophical levels. Unlike how they would be imagined later, most of them were realists, and did not place too much hope in the alien civilization they served either. Their betrayal was based only on their despair and hatred of the human race. Mike Evans gave the Adventists their motto: We don’t know what extraterrestrial civilization is like, but we know humanity.

Thanks for updating the link :)

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/googles-mysterious-searchapp-links-leave-android-users-concerned/

Link points to search.app instead of actual source.

making people click hundreds of links to get to the real EULA

This could be turned into a game with some kind of narrative like a Choose-Your-Own-E.U.L.Adventure. Players might try to exploit it though, so there should probably be some terms they have to agree to first.

haven’t join any other instance besides lemmyworld

Not even @Don_Dickle@lemmy.ml ~30 days ago (banned 22 days ago)?

In a Neal Brennan stand-up special (Piped link) he mentions he uses a Pavlok to shock him every 3 minutes on stage to remind him to smile.

Can they just insist it’s pronounced like jimp and sidestep the issue? Imgur, .gif, GNOME, GIPHY get to set their own rules on pronunciation.

The Piped bot is checking comments for instances of a YouTube domain and video id (I don’t know specifically what it triggers on) and then replies with a link to that video id as a Piped-based one. But what it should also do is check if the initial comment also contains the Piped URL it’s about to post and then not reply with a duplicate of that same address.

For example I’d post something like

• Watch this YouTube video (Piped mirror)

And the bot would reply offering the exact “Piped mirror” address I had already linked to. This would happen regardless of if I used custom link text or just left it as a raw URL so the bot clearly wasn’t doing a check of either method.

Awesome, glad I was able to help!

That bot has long been a thorn in my side, both due to that Lemmy bug but relatedly because I used to include Piped links with all my YT ones but the bot doesn’t(/didn’t?) check for them before replying anyway. I’ve never created a bot but I can’t imagine it’s more than like a single line to do a regex search for the exact link it intends to post and aborting if it’s found.

I would get that when I had bots disabled in settings and one would reply to me (usually the Piped link bot). After manually adding that specific bot to the block list that stopped happening.

If they used the native instance blocking feature to “completely block” the instance that actually only hides posts from that instance.

From https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-12-15_-_Lemmy_Release_v0.19.0_-_Instance_blocking,_Scaled_sort,_and_Federation_Queue

Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.

I heard of it from a Reddit comment about an easter egg location in Diablo 3 called “The Fowl Lair.” It’s filled with chickens and a single Greasy Pig.

The Chicken and the Pig

The fable of the Chicken and the Pig is used to illustrate the differing levels of commitment from project stakeholders involved in a project. The basic fable runs:

A Pig and a Chicken are walking down the road.
The Chicken says: “Hey Pig, I was thinking we should open a restaurant!”
Pig replies: “Hm, maybe, what would we call it?”
The Chicken responds: “How about ‘ham-n-eggs’?”
The Pig thinks for a moment and says: “No thanks. I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”

Sounds like “hazing.”

Do animals count as actors? Turner & Hooch could be interesting with Tom Hanks drooling and running on all fours and Beasley The Dog playing a detective.

So due to sunk cost the better choice is to continue supporting bad behavior?

That’s colloquially referred to as retail therapy. I don’t think occasionally indulging in it is bad as long as you’re cognizant of its purpose as a coping mechanism and understand the relief/pleasure it provides probably isn’t going to be long-lasting.

In my family, all impulse purchases had to be “justified” with whatever flimsy reasoning was necessary. I don’t think that’s any better and if it’s not coming at the expense of things you actually need, it’s good to be able to decide you want something just because you do. Otherwise you can start going down the path of, “Do I really need cheese on this burger? Do I really need variety in my food? Do I really need to be eating three times a day?”

Life should be lived, just don’t lose sight of the big picture of course. Also, I’m sure other people around you approve of your buying deodorant :)