TheTechnician27

Is this the state of the press now?

No? What gave you that impression? The only semi-serious press I see about this is from the sports column of USA Today. Everything else – what little there is – is tabloid trash like The Daily Beast or the Daily Mail (don’t construe this as me putting those on the same level; a tide pool and an abyssal trench are both in the ocean).

Just because something on Twitter says “BREAKING” doesn’t mean it’s receiving actual coverage. “The press” isn’t a monolith.

And the ones that aren’t are usually called “off-label”. ;)

Your comments don’t seem to address any of this. Why is that?

Because that’s not at all what the original comment was about. Why am I expected to offer up a treatise on the consequences of apples on the American frontier in order to debunk someone purporting – unsubstantiated and evidently with no regard for the truth – that Appleseed was running “a land grab scam based on the laws of the time”?

Edit: I guess since the original comment mentioned it, I could mention the obvious that, no shit, this was stolen land just like effectively every parcel of US land. But what good does this do our discussion of Appleseed’s character as an alleged scam artist? It’s generally understood that Appleseed had a very good relationship with the Native Americans he encountered, and yes, sometimes you can be an overall well-meaning person while advancing a deeply unethical system.

And you really think that at 62 I’m gonna go track down a historical factoid to satisfy the gatekeeping of a LEMMY sub?

Well hey, as a wise person once said:

Too damn many stupid people in this world.

Yeah, Appleseed would generally move ahead of pioneers and start nurseries on land he thought would be settled. It wasn’t some land shakedown scam like the original comment is implying; it was a very useful service that Appleseed would even forego payment for to those who couldn’t afford it. Apples were a dietary staple on the frontier, often used for bartering, and sometimes, as you said, you even legally needed an orchard.

I’d go even further and say that this is more generic than capitalism/anticapitalism wish fulfillment. It’s a desire to speak truth to power but without any of the effort or sincere curiosity to learn what that truth is. To have that truth condensed onto a smaller and smaller spoon until you don’t even realize you’re being spoonfed at all is the ideal.

IIRC

You don’t recall correctly, and I have no idea where you got that information. Appleseed actually was a successful businessman who bought some land, owning about 1200 acres (~5 km²), but by all accounts he was a genuinely good person, and I’ve never heard what you’re saying (and not substantiating) that he did.

Rule 4, OP.

Reflexes honed over thirty attempts at beating Father Gascoigne.

Not only that, but this city street allegedly in Minneapolis or Portland is 100% empty except for some random protester, a single ICE agent in full military gear, and some rando half a kilometer away.

The man holding the blower is not only nonchalant as fuck, but his facial expression looks confused like it’s his first time using one.

Either:

• Some of the pepper spray would’ve hit the protester before he turned on the blower (or even while it was running), in which case his nonchalant demeanor is even more absurd.
• The agent saw a man pointing a leafblower at him or even saw it running and thought: “Yeah, this is a great time and position to deploy pepper spray.”
• The protester is using reflex mode from The Phantom Pain and turned the blower on at the exact moment the agent started spraying.

The ICE agent is using an ungodly amount of pepper spray and is continuing to spray despite knowing he’s involved in some Wile E. Coyote shit right now.

Perfect angle of the action and flawless timing while holding the camera completely steady. They’re literally positioned like actors in a stage play.

I’m sorry: I can’t imagine who looked at this for more than half a second and thought: “Yeah, that checks out.” There’s no “probably” about this without some deeply entrenched wishful thinking.

Oh, and the doorway of that red brick building on the left is casually just like four meters tall.

The post is just an ad disguised as a guide

That said:

its obvious they want to be like google but with “privacy” as a gimmic because its only private until they get a government order telling them to do something to unmask a user or monitor an email.

Besides the fact that Proton is based in Switzerland where government warrants aren’t issued willy-nilly, please learn how the mathematics behind encryption works – or, if not, at least trust that it does. For emails that are sent E2EE, Proton can only have garbled data that requires a key they don’t have.

You’re just constantly talking out your ass, and I have no idea why; it’s so unearned. Like I’m not going to debate you on whether ads or corporations are good because a) I broadly agree and b) that’s just, like, our opinions, man, but then you just say shit that’s so demonstrably untrue that all I can think is: “I fucking hate what this decade has done to people.”

Before I address the substance: that’s not what an ad hominem is in the context of an argument. I’d already 100% finished attacking the substance of their argument. An ad hominem would be if I fallaciously appealed to a personal characteristic (real or otherwise) to attack an argument of theirs. “You’re wrong because you’re a dipshit”.

Anyway: man, I dunno. It’s 2026, and I’ve gotten really fucking sick of being unilaterally bound by etiquette when the bullshit asymmetry principle and the Dunning–Kruger effect are being stretched to their limits by insufferable, insolent shitheads who’ve unburdened themselves of critical thinking and assume having a platform to the entire world makes them qualified to say anything about everything (I can fall into this trap too, but holy shit sometimes).

I was still more polite than they were, still exercised more critical thought than they did, and still addressed the substance, and that’s fine enough by me not to tone police myself.

but i guess thats why I don’t work in marketing

Yeah, I guess it is, because this article works in Proton’s favor on multiple levels:

• Plenty of Proton users have switched over from Gmail, still have their old account, and still, even with forwarding, occasionally need to use those old addresses.
• People who search for or are sent a guide who’ve never or rarely heard of Proton might end up on their site and read a guide that lambasts Google and its usage of AI.
• Meanwhile, Proton’s alternative product is being advertised everywhere on the page outside the guide and even is advertised within it.
• These guides are going to exist anyway (many, in fact). You’re acting like this is some extremely niche thing users might want to do. Having your own guide but poisoned with your marketing when you’re the underdog is a sound idea.
• This gives a benevolent image of “Good Guy Proton” who just wants to keep people’s data private regardless of business – and a “Bad Guy Google” image because it’s apparently so dire that their competition has to do this.
• Consumers becoming more privacy-conscious generally is a boon long-term for businesses like Proton.

You’re so smarmy about this but just come off as a complete dipshit who gave this two seconds of thought.

Hey, if you remember, the last time you whined about this, I appended the most recent 2025 position to the bottom of the list – just to soothe your oh-so-good-faith concern that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics might’ve decided between 2016 and now that “actually, modern medical research is bullshit and plant-based dieting is unhealthy”.

Adding to what you said, I’ll just drop this here.

The developers’ page on GOG.

A shame that GamingOnLinux only links to Steam when some of their games are available DRM-free on GOG – pretty goddamn relevant when the games are set to be delisted in like 10 days.

Microblogs are differentiated from blogs almost entirely by the short length of their posts (we’re normally talking hundreds of characters); that’s why they’re called “microblogs”. Wikipedia accurately summarizes and properly sources:

Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts or status updates.

I could’ve also invoked titles, but the length difference is so vast that there’s no need.

Reddit categorically fails the micro part, but it even fails the blog part. The whole point of a blog is that you follow an individual account’s writings, and – except for a new, tacked-on, superfluous, barely used feature where you can follow users – Reddit has you follow subforums.

Basically, I’d already be confused about how someone could categorize Reddit as a blog, but to think it’s a microblog is to fundamentally not know what that is.

Edit: just to illustrate the absurdism, the average English word by usage is about 4.5 characters, implying about 8500 words. A single-spaced, 12-point page can fit about 3000 characters, and thus you’re looking at roughly a 13-page, 8500-word essay.

Trade tensions between the US and Europe had eased since the two sides struck a deal at Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland in July.

God, even amid everything else, this sentence is so fucking rancid.

Reddit is a link aggregator and forum. There’s no hard line for how many characters is too many to be a microblog, but Reddit’s 40,000 for a post and 10,000 for a comment is plainly disqualifying.

Edit: Oh, but Reddit is also a meme. Case closed; I retract my objection. /s

• Not a meme
• Not a microblog