Ask Lemmy

Paper straws were pushed by big corporate polluters to build a negative association with environmentalism.

Plastic straws are single-use plastics, but seem unexceptional by those standards. It's almost a meme that they're being singled out like they're the single greatest source of plastic waste, or uniquely damaging to ocean life.

On top of that, there are way better ways of reducing straw usage. I've used bioplastics that seemed way better. You could redesign the lids. You can do the plastic bag thing and charge people a nickel for a straw or whatever. Hell, you could just not give straws with every drink, and plenty of people will just drink from their cups and glasses. Instead, we get paper straws, something that is so obviously a bad idea it sounds like a joke, or a metaphor for a useless invention. Often served with cups and lids made entirely out of plastic.

So you get a bunch of people who have their drinks kind of ruined by a frustrating straw. It's a small thing, but it's just a little nudge away from environmentalism. You build an association with disappointment and inconvenience. Maybe it doesn't cause a big sway, but it makes people maybe a little more anti-environmentalist than they already were, or just less passionate about environmentalism.

What about r/catstandingup? Videos or Pics of cats standing.

The comments and replies to comments are always: Cat.

Ken Paxton has dirt on every Republican in Texas, and the fraud we know about is probably a multitude less than what he actually does.

Windows, Android, & Apple software used to nag you about installing updates endlessly. They don't do that so much anymore. I think it's because instead of alerts asking us to install updates, they now create network outages, software crashes, and other minor issues that require a restart. How often do you have some inexplicable problem, restart your device to fix it, and your machine is like "Hey while we're in there we're also installing this update we just downloaded a moment ago."

Tiktok is a Chinese psyop to turn the next generation of Americans into drooling idiots.

The removal of The Fairness Doctrine was a deliberate psyop of The Monied Elite to dumb down the general populace of the US to accept Capitalist propaganda and rule. Well, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's fact. Then we were bombarded by blatant capitalist propaganda for 50 years. But, but, the worst aim was to condition the general populace to casual cruelty as entertainment.

Witness how Congress has degenerated into The Jerry Springer Show and Judge Judy. And half of the populace think it's funny, and there's nothing wrong with it. Republican politicians daily lie their asses off, and there are no consequences. An entitled, malignant narcissistic psychopath is worshipped as a demigod. Congregations who watch Fox every night are literally telling their preachers/priests/pastors that Jesus is a woke pussy. That's not opinion, it's a fact.

I recall reading that Goering and Goebbels both stated that a lie that is repeated enough times becomes truth in the zeitgeist. This country is in big trouble, and I think the Heritage and Federalist stacked SCOTUS is going to appoint Trump King due to an avalanche of upcoming election lawsuits.

This country was established by rich men who didn't want to pay taxes. But, some good things came from it. That you could speak to power without the fear of retribution. That a religious entity could not punish you arbitrarily on a whim. That the rich could not pass on their wealth and power to scions without penalty. That this country would not be ruled by a blatant aristocracy and monarchy.

I will not live in a Trump Theocratic Oligarchy. I'm an old man, with no wife and no kids. Do what you have to do, and leave if you can. The writing is on the wall. I don't know how much more you need to see and know to wise up, but it's here, right in your face.

Soda bottle caps for newer types of soda fit worse onto the bottles. They’re harder to re-thread on, for example, the new Oreo Coke than they are on the old Diet Coke.

The reason that newer bottle designs are harder to thread is that they’re trying to make people drop the cap, leading to just giving up on re-capping.

This is to reinforce the narrative that people lose their bottle caps.

Which is to lend support for the drive to make caps attached to a little ring on the bottle, like in Europe.

Scar was the hero in The Lion King.

"Trad-wives" are the pick me girls' final form. I think it's also for women who want to do OnlyFans type work, but don't want to be as risqué. It's like soft core incel porn more than an actual depiction or celebration of maternity.

Firefox knows the exact worst time to force a restart on me. What's up with that?

When windows has updated and needs to restart it purposefully gets a bit slower/buggy to make people restart the PC.

The Jan 6th temper tantrum was instigated as a response to the BLM and other Covid-era protests. The owner class was getting nervous about the working class protesting about things that matter, so they riled up some of their disposable morons to storm the Capital as a way to discredit direct action. And we're already seeing the effects; whether it's a labor strike or a student sit-in, we're told by centrists to "protest peacefully" and not inconvenience anyone, aka don't protest.

How little is little here? People tend to treat any deviation as big.

content warnng: Magic The Gathering

facts: a couple of weeks ago the commander rules committee, the independent group that governs the popular Commander format, started receiving death threats after they banned some boring ass broken cards (jeweled lotus? dockside extortionist? nobody is ride or die for those)

as a result, the rules committee turned over control of the format to Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro, the makers of magic the gathering

fact: last year after some magic the gathering content was leaked, Hasbro send literal pinkertons to harasss the youtuber leaking it and recover the leaked goods

conspiracy theory: hasbro hired the pinkertons to make those death threats against the rules committee so that hasbro could seize control ove the most popular independent format of magic

I don't think this is too far out there but I haven't seen it around much. Epstein was a honeypot.

He got an absolutely disgusting sweetheart deal for his initial conviction resulting in him being released for 12 hours a day for work and a 13 month sentence. Now the attorney that cut that deal (illegally, mind you) was Alex Acosta. He was nominated for secretary of labor in 2017 and faced scrutiny for that deal, to which he said he was told epstein "belonged to intelligence" and to "leave it alone."

Supporting circumstamtial evidence includes ghislaine maxwells father having known connections to MI6, mossad, and the KGB, though he died in 1991 so that doesn't necessarily imply much. Additionally, the FBI has HARD FUCKING EVIDENCE including tapes which doubt less contain CSAM, yet nobody has actually been arrested as a result.

The issue is that this relies on taking Acosta at his word, and he's kind of a huge piece of shit. It could be possible that he was buddies with epstein and gave him a deal and covered up the evidence because he was involved too, and presumably enough powerful people in government were involved to keep everything quiet.

Sounds crazy when spelled out, but it's hard to imagine why else nothing would come of the mountains of evidence that probably followed the raids, or why epstein wasn't closely watched after his initial conviction.