This is the guy who dressed up in an American flag suit that you’re talking about.

If they do it’ll probably be close.

Ew

And Reddit was small for years and years when it started. I don’t even think I really started using it till around 2013-2014. Didn’t have a username or anything just came across it through Google searches. All websites take a while to build a userbase.

I’ll be honest I miss old Reddit

Everyone does. Just like we all miss og Myspace or geocities sites. Old Reddit at its prime was a different time period. Can’t recapture that just like you can’t recapture the geocities era of the internet.

We’re being enshittified. Lemmy is the least enshittified (thus far.)

Yeah but thats better than most niche message boards back in their heyday. Probably better than y incubators message board to.

A big chunk of reddit traffic and users are bots. Another large segment are more recent arrivals from India (check out how many Indian topics make the front pages on the weekends when USA/UK traffic is low.) While I can’t prove it I have a hunch that Spez hired a bunch of Indian clickfarms to pump the numbers before the IPO. Maybe he just promoted in India more to get an influx of users for the IPO or maybe they are mostly “social media marketers” hired to sell health/peptide supplements (seriously there are services that do that on Reddit so be careful ever taking any such advice from them.)

But my point is that the quality of users is pretty weak and I’m certain American advertisers have noticed by now. 300ish real, quality users is a better engagement metric than 6000 bots.

He really is a shitty person. He had a moment during the 2016 primaries but was easily eclipsed by Trumps personality. He was suppose to work on DOGE with Elon but got canned after his Christmas day insult pissed off a ton of MAGA’s. He’s also managed to offend Christians in Ohio, he is a brand of Hindu that believes in a monotheists god but not necessarily a Christian god. He said something like “Jesus Christ isn’t THE God he’s a god” or something like that and you can imagine how that, along with his hindu-lite religious believes, went over with the Bible crowd.

I’m hoping he keeps screwing up.

I mean unless they are somehow trying to develop an antibiotic and vaccine resistant strain of the plague?

That would be unwise as you’d ideally want to have an antibiotic available for your own troops in a war. We also pretty much know about all of Russia’s bioweapon work after the cold war ended, there’s even an Anthrax island site they abandoned.

Fortunately bio weapon research is even more niche today than it was at the height of cold war tensions and all nations have cut back and destroyed big chunks of their stockpiles.

Also keep in mind that things like leprosy still occur in the USA (Florida is even seeing a small increase in cases) so it’s not necessarily that uncommon or a cause for concern. Things like the plague, leprosy and even strep throat (known as scarlet fever back when it regularly killed kids and routinely caused deafness in survivors) and easier to cure/treat thanks to modern medicine. The hygienic practices we have these days also help keep these things from breaking out like they used to.

Vivek Ramaswamy. He is a con-man running for governor of Ohio. He made his fortune by buying a failed alzheimer drug and then lying to investors about its potential in order to jack up the stock price of his company. He is also famous for going on a Christmas day rant, along with Elon Musk, about how entitled and worthless American workers are because we demand things like a living wage and want free time to enjoy things like recreation.

He isn’t doing to well in Ohio fortunately.

What all these tweet-historians ignore is that the wickedness they’re criticizing is not unique to the USA, or even the Western world. Its also not a purely Imperialistic trait as it existed long before Roman Imperialism and it exists in the Eastern world as well.

China, India, the middle east… they all have histories filled with cruelty and evil acts that rival anything the USA has. In some ways, like when that Chinese army was trapped and had no food so the emperor offered his concubines as food and the soldiers gleefully obliged, are horrors American history lacks.

Remember; cruelty is a human trait, not an American one (or one isolated to one nation, people, culture or time period.)

The USA is just as bloody as its parent, the UK, and they’re both as bad as other nations with an Imperial past.

Or, you know, damn near every single empire or powerful ruler throughout all of human history. The Greek golden age was only possible thanks to slaves working the fields, Rome was similar in this regard.

Eastern nations weren’t any better, read up on ancient Chinese culture and all the fucked up shit they did.

Same goes for India, hell they’re still trying to end child marriage but still represent like 20-25% of all child marriages in the world.

People love to dog on America, and I’ll be happy to point out all the historical examples, but the truth is this is more a symptom of the human condition and less about a nation. Look at the other countries on earth and you’ll find plenty of evidence that evil isn’t isolated to one nation, people, culture or time period.

It’s universally a human thing.

Far more complicated than what you’re imagining. While some idiots are probably falling for AI articles suggesting you should drink your own urine the concept of urine and feces having medicinal value is ancient and we’re seeing these topics pop-up online because over past 10-15 years the share of internet users from these countries has exploded.

And old traditions die hard. India experienced a surge in the use of cow urine and feces as a medicine during COVID. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8239506/

The use of cow dung and urine to cure COVID‐19 in India: A public health concern

At first, the authorities should acknowledge the seriousness and consequence of this issue on public health. Then the public health authorities should create mass awareness to deal with this culture during these public health emergencies. They should inform the people that there is no scientific basis for smearing cow dung and urine to fight COVID‐19. The authority should also let the people know that cow dung and urine are a metabolic waste of cows, and there are no ingredients to boost the human immune system. The authority can involve scientists, political figures, healthcare professionals, media persons, and other famous people to educate the general population about the health safety issues regarding the use of cow dung and urine for the COVID‐19 cure.

I’m not surprised this pseudo-science garbage is trickling into our society, we’re more interconnected with other cultures than at any other point in human history.

A year after his explosive tenure at Doge, the SpaceX CEO is back in the Trump administration’s good graces

Elon is the one with power and Trump is conceding to this fact.

Thing is DOGE was successful at destroying many government agencies. That was always its intended goal, chaos.

Thats exactly what the Bay Area furries community said every time Elon Musk tried to join in back around 2008. True story.

Ketamine powers

There are no rules!

That isn’t great when it cuts both ways. I’ll stick with fixed pricing and enforceable tenant protection laws. Rules are there for a reason.

it’s not as tantalizing as what the AI giants are promising

I lost my job years ago to such con-men selling the idea of “outsource your IT to India, they’ll work for only $2 a day!!! Imagine the savings!!!”

And then their IT infrastructure went to shit. And any of us unemployed IT guys who called them out were labeled as racist for pointing out the people they fired us to outsource to were objectively unqualified.

Business owners need to wise up and realize every sales pitch they hear is probably a conman lying to get their money.

MBA’s will chase the lowest cost option regardless of how terrible it is. Like replacing skilled IT with people who will “work for $2 a day!!!” I lost my job hears ago to that pitch and I’ve talked to others who heard the identical claim “$2 a day I have to hire them.” Then it turned out most of these experts were totally unqualified to do the job. Wonder why 70% of websites are glitchy as fuck these days?

And the saracha company famously fucked themselves when the owner brought in a one of their relatives who was a newly minted MBA. These business genius fucked over the farmer the company has worked with since it was founded and ended up not being able to source the peppers they needed to produce their sauce. Remember the shortage a few years ago? Yeah that was cause the MBA dumbfuck burned the supplier that had helped them become a household name all in the sake of slightly more $$$

Cool. Glad I’m on an opinion forum and not a member of a legislative body that makes laws that apply to everyone.