It’s common to think of libraries as Public Book Rental, but recently most have expanded their services quite a lot.

• Rentals of items many households may only need briefly, like tools to find insulation gaps
• Online services that allow for digital renting of comics, manga, audiobooks, and even streaming services like Kanopy that have both old and new movies/TV shows
• Printing services; so that you don’t need to buy an ink cartridge for one printout one month, then another 4 months later when that cartridge has dried
• Tax prep assistance; because fuck Intuit

Libraries were admittedly the reason I started the thread but I’m also curious what other things will be mentioned.

I think at some point in time, I might have been a little bit more susceptible to this. I’ve had a very hard time getting a girlfriend, in part because of a terrible dating sphere - ironically, very much caused by rapists like Andrew Tate. So really, the men frustrated by lack of attention should be blaming Andrew Tate, not worshipping him, but the same situation is true for, say, businesses suffering from government regulation joining lobbying groups, etc.

Loneliness combined with the requisite image of male strength kind of forces people to either admit to being a loser, or “taking charge” in a way that demonizes the rest of the world. Being turned down repeatedly denies them a lot of power, so they’re eager to steal some back in any way they can, even if it’s for a cause that doesn’t actually help them.

As for why I never fell in there; I had good parents, and a financial cushion. If I was always starved for cash, chances are mental stress like that might’ve actually pushed me into very poor choices.

I call this Shadow the Hedgehog darkness. When something wants to look dark and mature from the outset, but it’s really a form of childishness. Same appearance takes effect for a lot of “dark” anime, where people are routinely betraying and causing pain, and “At its heart most of humanity just wants chaos” blah blah.

I do think there’s a lot of horrible stuff in the world, but it’s usually far more banal than anything these edgelords envision. When put face to face, people usually want to be kind to each other. But we’re not put face-to-face often enough.

I’m reminded of the initial framework that Auschwitz used for Jews. Many of them came voluntarily, because the Germans were making vague promises of “We’re planning a Jewish settlement where you will be safe, and kept separate from the German Aryan future.” So I could be reaching, but maybe he’s interpreting something around that - the idea of using “nice gestures” (lies) to lure people in and humanize themselves.

Of course, it’s a reach in any regard to interpret something coherent from Donald Trump, especially when regarding history.

It’s only recently I’ve come to the frightening realization that…we’re all tensely waiting for World War 3 to start. It HAS started, the fronts just aren’t within the traditional empires; and a good 70% of the war is on ideology and propaganda.

I really want a better formalized framework for argument/discussion of a topic that either participant can feel safe in. Currently, we have courtrooms, our old schools have Debate Clubs, but I’d want something far easier to pick up on that allows for time to research/validate discussion points.

Ugh. I suppose I can only feel grateful that Tencent’s stake is only in this subsidiary? I’ve already done as much as I can to divorce from Epic Games from Tencent’s 40% stake in them.

And yet, famous Japanese creators don’t understand the hate, and see it as a vocal minority. https://www.dexerto.com/assassins-creed/legendary-japanese-dev-says-normal-people-dont-care-about-assassins-creed-shadows-controversy-3168442/

I would be doing the same, but I decided to drop off fascist Twitch - just YouTube streams, and whoever cross-streams to Noice for me. (And, the latter doesn’t have ads!)

“Why did you put transgender people in this thing? Why did you make it divisive?”
“Wait. Walk that back. Why do you think that adding transgender people makes something divisive?”

The bigotry is hidden in the questions, but they’re not hiding so successfully anymore.

Especially since far-right groups have been falling for Musk’s same bullshit in Europe.

There’s been reports that Germany’s AFD party fell out of favor after their news got to see how Trump played out. I seriously hope that ends up being true in their next election.

50501 refers to “Fifty States, Fifty Protests, One Movement” (originally “One Day”). While some states have more presence than others, it has 50 chapters for the 50 states.

I don’t think there’s as much presence on Lemmy, but lots of media gets posted to Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/.

Their website also links to social media accounts covering more of it: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/

To be very clear here, my outrage is not at being pranked with a rick roll. I’d be fine with decent politicians doing that on most days. It’s specifically with reversed courses on transparency regarding circumstantial evidence that the president was involved in sexual assault.

Obama gave out his birth certificate. Bernie Sanders shows his tax returns. The Republican Party is a team of liars that shares nothing.

Everyone here was alive when the invasion started. Russia invaded Ukraine. THEN Ukraine considered entering NATO. They were happy to stay out of it as long as Russia stayed away. They didn’t. Some saw it coming, as Russia has violated just about every treaty they’ve entered.

There’s a few points I maybe want to bring up on this, though.

Through Trump’s installation, many learned what USAID was for the first time. For all it does in the world, it was never tooting its own horn. Sure, its existence is a tradeoff we made to allow for the fact of having one of the strongest military presence. But I still don’t think its existence and actions up until now should’ve been taken for granted.

Plus: Other nations in Europe cannot currently claim to be beyond manipulation via far-right rhetoric and misinformation. Germany is currently dealing with those issues in its own elections, and the very identity of that country is rooted in acknowledging the evils of 1940. Vladimir Putin targeted the United States because it was their biggest singular obstacle to expansion, acknowledging that there’s no single presidency to easily “corrupt” the European Union.

I agree that much blame lies on the USA’s population for so gullibly accepting such terrible campaign lies. I just don’t think that kind of evil ignorance is uniquely American, and the rest of the world needs to stay vigilant, rather than assuming all threat will come externally.

It’s erroneous to claim the judge orders blocking the executive orders have done anything.

As judge of Lemmy, I order you to stop posting. /s

^ There, that statement alone had just as much effect as the judicial orders. Fact is, DOGE still has extensive access to most of the systems that they breached, and judges have largely been ignored, or have given rulings complicit with Trump’s actions.

If a kid happens to have two dads, then what the hell are you going to hide from them until they’re friggin’ 13 years old? And WHY?

I am fine with a stance like “I don’t know”…as long as you’re not pushing any kind of agenda as a result.

A long time ago, I was uninformed about trans people. I was curious and asked questions…but I didn’t push them into any kind of restrictions.

I’d argue I’m still relatively uninformed. But I know that there’s been no evidence of any societal benefit from pushing further restrictions on them, and there’s plenty of evidence of harm by referring to the various gender studies. That’s all I need. Even if I wasn’t actively pushing to support trans youths, and even if I still have a part of me that sees them as “weird”, I sure as hell see no point in standing in the way of their preferred forms of progress.

You may want a more recent news update before you claim the judiciary has been responsive. Judge Tanya Chutkan, the same one who ruled against insurrection charges “because we don’t prosecute sitting presidents”, just blocked the multi-state lawsuit requesting DOGE be restrained.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/18/politics/doge-temporary-restraining-order-chutkan/index.html

Can I confirm whether this outage was affecting downloaded singleplayer games? I didn’t think that would be the case.