It could be as simple as peer pressure and not wanting to be wrong.

There’s an entire machine telling them they’re right to think what they do. They have an emotional investment in it.

I think they can talk themselves into whatever they want to believe. Seriously, we’re talking about people who willfully ignore all sorts of historic geopolitical events as references for everything from populism to fascism, think their Sky Fairy has in some way ordained this anti-Christ like figure, and ignore every economic, medical, and scientific expert offering objective facts about what does and doesn’t work.

So if they’re being told there is election fraud, it exists, until it doesn’t.

I miss them when they were good and effective. Like Groupon.

They all got enshittified and overrun by people trying to exploit the userbase for clicks.

No idea. If they want to waste their money on it it’s not my problem. I don’t participate in any social media that uses them.

That’s apples and oranges. They don’t want users with fetishes and gore. They can’t control those narratives. Some bot that they can control? That’s fine.

If an AI mentions their product, either by chance or deliberately, it can drive engagement and sales. These AI aren’t here just to be generic personalities or space fillers, they’re here to drive engagement and make money.

Does it make them money?

If yes, then they’re ok with pretty much anything.

Meanwhile, the USA is 24%-ish renewables and 60%-ish fossil fuels. Damn fossil fuel industry and anti-progress politicians.

“He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American,”

Yeah. Reading the rest of the article (not that I trust the press these days) his version of being an “American Patriot” is “fuck everyone I hate, they can burn” and he really wanted Trump to do that for him. President Musk getting in the way really pissed him off when he finally realized that Trump is just another spineless, vain, wealthy narcissist that DGAF about him.

White? Conservative? Has lots of guns? Republican?

Just mental illness, depression, etc.

Anything else? Terrorism or career criminal because they stole a snickers a couple times, or had gang affiliation,

I’ve kept up on the vaccine

Had both Pfizer and Moderna. Dunno what everyone else’s reactions have been based on the brand, but Moderna sucks. Wiped me out the next day with a headache and body aches. The Pfizer was barely a sore arm and a little tiredness.

Implosion of oligarchs?

You are sadly mistaken that the fallout will harm the wealthy. They aren’t going to throw up their hands in despair, they’ll just further attack worker and consumer protections, salaries, benefits, retirement funds and all the rest. I don’t know what planet you live on where the oligarchy just go ahead and hand out money to the masses because their exploited labor force got deported. They just find new bodies and exploit even harder when they’ve already made it a mission to crush the middle class.

Apparently a detonation device, too. While a redneck might have fun blowing stuff up out in the back 40, I think the combination of items and location don’t make this a camping trip.

Infinite growth is needed to keep investors happy.

I don’t understand the difficulty in understanding the fediverse. It’s just linked instances (servers), that can share posts if they want to. Pick one you like and sign up. Done.

If that’s too hard for people they probably don’t belong here.

All meshes with the “buy your way to heaven” mentality the evangelists have. Throwing money at their deity-ordained politician is the same as throwing money at Supply Side Jesus.

It’s almost impossible to retire.

Say 1.5 million in retirement savings earning 5% making $75,000 year.

According to AARP the average cost of cancer treatment is $150k, so some is less, some is more. Hope you get the “less” side, but if not…

There goes all your income. Unless you start withdrawing the principal. If you do, and survive, now your income is reduced.

$1.5 million, looking at the American financial landscape, is not a number most Americans are going to have when they reach retirement age.

So in other words - if we highly restrict the parameters of what information we’re looking at, we then get a possible 10 bits per second.

Sour grapes. There are no guarantees he would have won, and the propaganda machine would have played almost exactly the same tune it did for Harris. Eggs, israel, gas prices, too old…

People stayed home. That’s why we got trump.

There’s no difference between then and today.

They still refuse to punish the monied elite.

The very same reason trump never got sentenced and why he’s our next president.