- 40 Posts
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SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialto
Asklemmy@lemmy.ml•What's the biggest case of planned obsolescence you've dealt with?English
28·2 days agoLaboratory instruments controlled by shitty software that’s somehow tied to a particular version of Windows, and won’t work with 11. And, of course, the manufacturer won’t update it, because they’d much rather you drop a quarter million on the new model.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoUnited States | News & Politics@midwest.social•Trump exasperated by his poor polling on the economyEnglish
6·3 days agoJust gonna leave this here:
Abstract
Humans have been arguing about the benefits of dictatorial versus democratic regimes for millennia. Despite drastic differences between the dictatorships in the world, one of the key common features is the Dictator’s Dilemma as defined by Wintrobe [1]: a dictator will never know the true state of affairs in his country and is perpetually presented distorted information, thus having difficulties in making the right governing decisions.
Sucks when reality pierces the bubble created by the yes-men around you.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialto
Wisconsin@midwest.social•Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has a history of spreading vaccine misinformation. Now he is praising chlorine dioxide, a disinfectant and deodorizer.English
21·3 days agoHe ought to chug a cup of this stuff to prove he’s not a cowardly, disingenuous piece of shit.
I drove to the East Coast and back twice in recent months, and… I don’t know if parents try to keep this fact from their children in order to try to shield them from the harsh realities of life, but I feel like that’s doing them a disservice, because then they have to discover on their own that there is so much Ohio.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialto
Showerthoughts•There are first person shooters and third person shooters, but what about second person shooters?
33·4 days agoI’m not a gamer, so I had to look up the definition of a third-person shooter. It seems like very poor terminology; it’s actually a second-person shooter. There’s the player (1st) giving commands to an on-screen avatar (2nd). Where’s the 3rd person?
I’m thinking a true third-person shooter would consist of an NPC shooting at your unarmed avatar?
By the time I left r/fuckcars, people were asking this question several times per day, or every 15-20 minutes at peak times. I recall that the moderators had an auto-mod bot that would respond, and my paraphrase of it is something like this:
We don’t hate the cars, per se, but rather the physical, environmental, and social destruction wrought by designing all aspects of daily life around their use (to the near-exclusion of anything else). Small, cheap, utilitarian motorcycles are better than cars in a lot of ways (space, cost, fuel economy), and worse in others (noise, pollution). They’re fine, as long as the riders aren’t demanding that the entire landscape and society be structured and built to cater to their machines.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoUnited States | News & Politics@midwest.social•Tourists to US would have to reveal five years of social media activity under new Trump planEnglish
2·4 days agoBased on how CBP has been treating people for years… they’d be shipped to CECOT for lying about not using social media.
LPT: Statements that include the word “problematic” can be safely ignored. If the speaker could articulate the problem, they would.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoUnited States | News & Politics@midwest.social•Leaked Pam Bondi memo targets 'anyone who isn’t a Trump supporter': investigatorEnglish
21·4 days agoShould I feel targeted, as this description applies to several hundred million people in the U.S. alone.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoDSA@midwest.social•Democracy: On meetings and votingEnglish
1·5 days agoWhy does that scene from The Life of Brian play in my mind when reading this?
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoUnited States | News & Politics@midwest.social•Supreme Court weighs Republican appeal to end limits on party spending in federal electionsEnglish
1·5 days agoAs legal-bullshit specialists, I wouldn’t put it past 'em to figure out how it’s legal for the Republican Party to spend on federal races, but not Democrats.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialto
Asklemmy@lemmy.ml•Are the movies/older films a fake representation of New York's "crowdynes" or has the number of people and cars in the streets really declined?English
2·6 days agoThere’s a reason New Yorkers hate going to Times Square :]
They’re privacy-conscious and don’t want to appear in stock footage?
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoUnited States | News & Politics@midwest.social•Billionaire Palantir Co-Founder Pushes Return of Public Hangings as Part of 'Masculine Leadership' Initiative
15·7 days agoI just listened to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and I’m reminded of this exchange:
Trillian:…ever since they reinstituted the death penalty for insurance executives.
Arthur: For what offense?
Trillian: Offense?
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialto
Technology@lemmy.zip•iPhone case with e-ink display lets users read books and comics without screen glareEnglish
154·8 days agoThat’s brilliant! Now, when users replace their phone, they also have to replace a second device. Hooray for planned obsolescence!
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialto
Not the Onion@lemmy.ml•Fifa awards Trump its first ever 'peace prize'
23·8 days agoAnd just like that, MAGA loves participation trophies.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoAltMedia@altmedia.house•Ms Rachel responds to antisemitism allegations: "The Stop Antisemitism Now group should not be able to try to ruin people's lives"English
22·8 days agoIn fact, they want to increase antisemitism around the world. The state of Israel faces demographic challenges, namely that the Arab population has historically had a higher fertility rate, so it has been relying on immigration to ensure that the Jewish population growth rate outpaces the Arab one. If Jewish people feel unsafe enough in the countries where they live, more of them may be driven to make aliyah.
(Also, there’s been an uptick in emigration from the state of Israel since the Oct. 7th attack, which AFAICT has not been significant in sheer numbers, but a worrying trend for the leaders. Antisemitism around the world makes leaving less attractive.)
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtoUnited States | News & Politics@midwest.social•US airstrike survivors clung to boat wreckage for an hour before second deadly attack, video shows
141·9 days agoNo true Scotsman, eh? This is the U.S. military, like it or not. If you served, and believed in honor, my condolences.




















Here is osmium, a framework and tool to work with OpenStreetMap data.