She’s a character named Hexadecimal, from the 90s show ReBoot.

I used to consider it a way to highlight a comment that I thought others should see. I have no idea if it holds the same power now, since gold, platinum, and a million other little “award badges” are now available. Yet once upon a time, seeing a gold icon next to a comment seemed to draw people’s attention. If a comment got gilded early, you’d see a huge difference in upvotes and replies for that particular comment.

I’m glad to be of service.

I always figured mermaids would be more like cetaceans than fish. Having scales on their tails would be inaccurate, but breathing air, growing hair, and having a horizontal tail fluke are all in-line with mammals/cetaceans.

Not to mention, it would mean mermaids would have regular genitals (albeit hidden inside a genital fold, to increase hydrodynamics.) It would also mean they’d have normal placental pregnancies.

So that’s, uhh… a thing to consider.

Please forgive them, such a concept is unheard of back where we come from.

This, but at legal dispensaries.

Not even joking. I don’t know if it’s my state’s specific laws or what, but the dispensary cashier can either process your card like an ATM (they round up to the nearest $10, then give you the change) or they can process cash.

There is a third option, but it involves downloading an app specifically to pay for cannabis. And… yeah, I’m not doing that.

In dark times of desperation, seeking help on the internet, I sometimes find myself tempted by the Reddit thread in the top of my search results.

But I know that if I click it, the only thing that will happen is the familiar cross-armed Snoo popping up and telling me, “You’ve been blocked by network security.”

It’s like a reality check for me: I don’t want to use Reddit, and Reddit doesn’t want me using it. So I’m going to need to either get better at searching for solutions, or try to solve problems in my own way.

In the end, introducing more barriers to entry has simply reinforced my decision not to go to Reddit. Their blocking of VPNs has conditioned me to ignore Reddit links in search results entirely, mentally filtering them out the same way I do with ads/sponsored content.

Nice work, Spez.

BONUS: I just came across a Google support page where someone asks, “How do I Block Reddit and Quora results from all searches permanently”. The top answer is hilarious and sad.

Is that instance defederated from .world ? The link gives me the “couldn’t_find_community” error. I searched for the community via Duckduckgo and was able to see it, but was logged out. When I logged in, all the posts disappeared.

It feels wrong to hit the “block” button for something I’m simply not interested in, but ever since I started using it to curate my home page, the content has become more relevant to me. Personally, I never had the patience to get into coding, so I block communities about it. I have nothing against it, and I love that coders have communities they can take part in, but blocking that topic means more space for things I like when scrolling through All.

I think Lemmy’s still in the process of maturing. I would love to see the kind of niche communities that Reddit has, where the topic of the sub is oddly specific yet not polarizing. I even have an idea for one that can provide some of that energy, but I’m trying to save up more content for potential posts before taking the leap to create it.

I feel like the lack of karma adds in to the civility, but I can’t say that for certain. On Reddit, seeing someone’s karma count seems to sway people’s opinions before even reading what that person says. But here, those votes don’t carry over. In other words, each comment offers a “clean slate.”

There are a few usernames I see and interact with here often. Sometimes I agree with a comment, sometimes I disagree with a comment, but without a total karma count tied to every user, each comment is free to stand on its own regardless of who said it. One bad take doesn’t spoil a person’s reputation. Vice versa, having one fantastic take doesn’t automatically elevate a user who might post something toxic in the future.

The cool thing about Wikipedia is that if you have expertise in a topic and find something incorrect on it, you can edit the page to be more accurate. The trickiest part is finding and adding relevant sources. There’s a learning curve to it, but at least anyone who’s used to writing research papers should have experience with that already.

Does anyone know of any plug-in or app that removes photos of him and Musk? I want to stay informed, but goddamn am I sick of seeing their faces plastered on every article. Even reader mode keeps the photos in.

nobody is forcing anyone to say “all x are y” because someone else is (I agree, in bad faith) doing the same thing.

Legal documents are being made to say that all x (transgender individuals) are now y (the wrong gender) because someone else (the government) is making them say so.

Arrive at work.

Coworker asks, “How are you?”

I respond, “Well, I’m here.”

Coworker nods knowingly.

Same story for me. I never used the mobile apps or modded any community, I just don’t want to contribute to a site that’s hostile to the creators and users that made it successful in the first place. I imagine there are a lot of ordinary users like us that came here for the same reasons.

I recently ordered some parts for an e-vape online. At the payment page it asked for a tip. I was in disbelief. (I didn’t take a screenshot, but in retrospect I should have.)

No services rendered, no food being made, nobody personally delivering it to my house. But it still wanted a tip, with the explanation that it was “to support our team!”

Where to even begin…

Pretty much all of the above. Sometimes it was a silly comment or argument that didn’t quite make sense. Sometimes it was like, “what are you trying to say?” but specifically asking for one’s reasoning helps clarify things.

I still might ask it some time, but I’ve found the environment here to be more hostile to rational thought than I’d originally expected… which was a sad discovery. A lot of people seem to react without first comprehending what they’re reading.

Also, thank you!

Yes, I agree. At no point did I ever propose such a dialogue. I’m talking about supporting those that already chose to leave.

At first I lurked on my boyfriend’s account. We had both left Reddit during the API debacle, but I wasn’t ready to rejoin social media yet, so he hopped on Lemmy first.

But as he shared links and news and memes with me, and I scrolled the comments, I started wanting to participate. The first few times I felt drawn to comment (but didn’t yet), I wanted to ask people what the reasoning was behind their thoughts. That stuff is interesting to me.

So when I finally sat down and made an account for myself, it was the first thought in my head. I haven’t found myself asking anybody about their reasoning since then, but I still like the name.

People do wake up from cults. It takes a lot of work on themselves to reach that point, however, and the most transformative moments (i.e. any epiphanies about their behavior or beliefs) will likely happen when they’re alone, outside of the public sphere.

That is to say, you’re unlikely to personally witness somebody break out of a cult. Yet, it still happens.

Does that make it worth helping them “see the light”? I can’t say. What I can say is that there are people who’ve been there, and there are resources available to help those in cult recovery. (Make no mistake, this is absolutely a cult.)

The best hope we’ve got right now is that as more things turn to shit, more people will begin to question things. Instead of reflexively downvoting or attacking someone who admits to having once voted for Trump, we’ve got to listen to what they say happened afterward. I want to hear people share their stories of disenchantment. I want those stories to be spread far and wide, to people who might be questioning Trumpism but who’re surrounded by his supporters and scared to make a move. They’re the people who need to know that it’s okay to change their minds. They’re going to need to know that they’ll be accepted by someone if they “deflect,” and we need to be prepared to welcome them to sanity.

We shouldn’t respond with comments like, “iT’s aBouT tiMe” or “Where have you BEEN the last 8 years?” (Both are paraphrased from comments I read elsewhere on here this morning.) I know it’s tempting to give out some sort of I told you so, but it’s not constructive and can push an ex-cult member away. We want people to turn a new leaf, and that means supporting those who admit to having been wrong.

(I know this took a turn from the original comment. I don’t intend this personally for you, OP. But after seeing how people react so aggressively to everything lately, I felt something like this needed to be said to Lemmy.)