Probably not Ankh-Morpork, because Vetenari is nothing if not competent.

Reality is a team sport, to some people. They don’t mean things when they say words. They’re just signalling loyalty to their ingroup hierarchy, and playing a dominance game where they get to decide what’s true. It’s not a judgement call. In their worldview there is no objective means to evaluate claims. There’s just whatever their guy says, and whatever our guy says, and their guy is right because he’s their guy.

So please stop falling for it when they declare themselves fiscal experts. They don’t give the slightest shit. They’re just shuffling cards. It’s another song and dance they do, to grasp for narrative legitimacy. Nothing else exists in their moral universe.

I don’t care if the robot that speaks English read the entire library.

How else was it going to happen?

Situation: there are 14 competing editors.

That is not what Firefox has done.

Linking to another instance is kind of silly.

… by submitting queries to another website that only does what’s ruining search engines.

Infantalizing people for their own good --> infantalizing people as an insult.

More behavior you need to cut the fuck out.

Nobody’s stopping you.

You should stop.

This is not a contradiction.

I would still be using 7 if ransomware wasn’t a thing.

I went back to Mint instead.

It’s bullshit and you should stop.

It’s a pattern of destroying information over puritanical nonsense. Treat people like adults.

Why, in the name of god, does Lemmy’s obsession with censorship include the word “jerk?”

You pay how much to be told no?

Windows 9x was low-bullshit.

NT and 2000 were corporate enough to be no-nonsense. They belonged to the administrator, but the administrator can be you.

ME was a mistake.

XP was not yet online enough to be properly skeezy.

But from Vista onward, yeah, it’s been an escalating shit-show that’s difficult to miss.

Fuck every form of this. Website: you deliver the document, and I decide if it works.

Addressing exactly one of those things: GBA Jam 2024 runs for another two months.

Java is an okay format owned by the devil. When two devices running Java connect via wifi, One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison expects the air in-between them to be properly licensed. If the free software movement had not been founded to say “fuck printers,” it would have sprung into being in order to say “fuck Oracle.”

If businesses spring up to advise customers how to handle your billing and legal departments, maybe you shouldn’t be a company anymore.

Advertising shits in your brain.

Exploiting trust is worse. That parasocial z-list celebrity isn’t recommending something - they were paid to read corporate propaganda.

The most painful version of this is Lindsey Ellis’s video on “Manufacturing Authenticity.” It ends with a deep sigh and an ad read. The brand knew she was doing a video about how brands pay the popular kids to shill their whatever, and they did not care, because all that matters is getting a known face to say the words.

And she’s the kind of woman Spike Spiegel loves: she’ll fucking kill you.