You don’t need those commas in that sentence. It makes you sound like Christopher Walken 😅

Rage against him when he does evil things, by all means. But when you start raging against him 24/7 for no particular reason, it serves no purpose. In fact, it lessens your ability to actually call him out when he does bad stuff, because you sound like the boy who cried wolf.

And more importantly, it also affects the quality of discussion on Lemmy. One major advantage we have over reddit is that people tend to actually read the articles and make insightful comments that add to the discussion. “Hurr Durr Muskrat bad” is the opposite of that, it’s a reddit style pandering comment that ultimately has no substance or meaning. When these circlejerky comments become more common than good comments, the value of this site as a forum for legitimate discussion falls off a cliff.

It’s baffling how people on Lemmy hate Musk so much and yet can’t stop mentioning him in every random, unrelated thread.

The starlink was privately bought as per the article, it wasn’t officially procured using federal funds. So the comment I responded to doesn’t really make any sense in the context of this post.

But it gets 50 upvotes because Musk is very bad man. I guess that answers my own question about why people can’t stop mentioning him on Lemmy: it’s free upvotes to shit on him. That’s fine I guess, but it can be annoying when it clogs up the discussion in unrelated threads.

What dude are you referring to? I’m confused how your comment relates to the article.

A few things.

• Admins can and do ban accounts that downvote rampantly

• Obvious bot brigading is obvious. It became harder to tell on reddit when they started fuzzing the vote numbers, but could frequently still be figured out. It’s easier on Lemmy, someone just has to report some unusual voting pattern to the admin and they can check if the voting accounts look like bots.

• I was once told that the algorithm is less weighted towards upvoted comments and more weighted towards recent comments on Lemmy, when compared with reddit. I am not sure if this is true, but I have noticed that recent comments tend to rise above the top upvoted comments in threads when viewing by Hot.

• Without any way for bad content to be filtered out, you just end up with an endless stream of undifferentiated noise. The voting system actually protects the platform from the encroachment of bots and the ignorant mob, because it helps filter them out from the users who have something of value that they want to contribute.

What a time to be alive

I see your point, but I would argue that in a world with nuclear weapons, climate change, and all sorts of shit that seems to be an existential risk, plus the media barrage, people today aren’t exactly feeling safe or comfortable. Hence the desperate hoarding of resources and brutal competition.

Agreed. It just seems more absurd now because of the contrast between our advanced technology and our primitive sociopolitical structures.

Primitive metallurgy was used to create weapons for millennia before it became commonly used for cookware. Technology has always been primarily used as vector for human beings to control and dominate one another, rather than to assist/improve society.

I’m pretty sure it actually is significantly more dangerous. The front end of traditional pickups will still crumple and absorb a great deal of force. If the cybertruck is more rigid and the sharp edges have a potential to gash pedestrians on impact, that’s two factors that don’t apply to current pickups.

Fascinating stuff, I enjoyed reading this thread. I don’t agree that the US has been worse than China, but you do make some very good points.