• It is instantly familiar in operation to anyone who has used Twitter. It looks and feels almost the same to use in a way that Mastadon doesn’t (arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, but it makes for a comfortable transition).

Yup, pretty much. I tried Mastodon and found it very unintuitive, but BlueSky was immediately understandable as a former Twitter user. I don’t really use either that much, but I’ve spent way more time with BlueSky.

Honestly, it’s the same with Lemmy. I tried a lot of Reddit alternatives, both federated and centralized, and I landed on Lemmy because A) It has the only decently-sized user base and B) my preferred Reddit app, Sync, moved to Lemmy. Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit on it’s own that transitioning over wouldn’t have been difficult, but having Sync just made it that much easier.

That’s why like Emma Vigeland. She’s calm, cool, and pretty open minded, and when things do get confrontational, it’s Tim Pool that’s screeching, not her.

Yeah, I fell off of TYT in 2017 or 2018 for a lot of the same reasons I can’t stand listening to right-wing pundits; a lot of smug and little information (mostly from Cenk). I hadn’t heard anything about Ana Kasperian. What happened with her?

There are some leftist podcasts that I like, but they are kinda just angry and unproductive, like The Insurgents; I only listen to them when I’m deeply angry or they have a good guest. The Lever is probably the best new left-wing podcast I’m listening to right now, and the Majority Report is always great.

I follow a lot of podcasts that are either center-left sources or Democratic party cheerleaders: NPR and the NPR Politics Podcast, Ezra Klein (God he’s an insufferable twat), the Daily, Pod Save America…some of these I listen to because I want to know what the, “mainstream American left,” believes, some of them just have good information; NPR’s Up First is a great 15 minute morning news wrap, and the Daily does good in depth reporting (even better when Michael Barbaro is on vacation).

I don’t listen to right-wing pundits like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh very often. They’re mostly culture war crap, and there’s usually very little information to be gained from them. I do regularly read conservative reporting though, mostly WSJ and the Economist.

The job post also notes that such a teleoperation center requires “building highly optimized low latency reliable data streaming over unreliable transports in the real world.” Tele-operators can be “transported” into the robotaxi via a “state-of-the-art VR rig,” it adds.

Sounds an awful lot like they’re going to need someone to remote pilot those cars when they get stuck. It also sounds like the system will have at least some latency, and will probably rely entirely on cameras, since Musk doesn’t build LiDAR or other non-visual sensors into his cars anymore! Anyway, sorry if that disrupts your, “I’m a sad dork who feels the need to defend the world’s richest man even though he makes hundreds of stupid, childish decisions that are clearly detrimental to the companies he owns,” agenda.

Ah yes, you know what’s better than a taxi driver? A taxi driver who relies on a camera with a limited field of vision, experiences input and video lag, and receives none of the tactile sensations that allow drivers to gauge road conditions.

Yeah, sports is a great analogy. Just because you don’t like basketball, doesn’t mean you won’t like soccer, and just cause you don’t like turn-based RPGs, doesn’t mean you won’t like 2D platformers. It’s all about finding what you vibe with.

Lots of good advice here, but I would just add, start with your interests and work out from there. You like puzzle games? Portal is a great physics puzzle game, so you might like that. It’s also a 3D platformer, so you’ll find out if you like games with a lot of running and jumping. It’s also technically a first-person shooter (not in the sense that you shoot enemies, but you do shoot a portal gun at walls), so if you don’t like that aspect of the game, you’ll know that FPSs aren’t for you.

Doesn’t have to be the type of gameplay either. You like designing things? Maybe try the Sims or Animal Crossing. Like horror movies? Maybe start with something simple but creepy, like Limbo. Detective stories? Something like Strange Horticulture might be up your alley.

The most important thing is to look around and see what catches your interest. Read some reviews, watch some gameplay footage, and find something that’s right for you. Don’t just say, “I’m going to do video games now,” and buy a Call of Duty or Dark Souls because, “gamers,” like them.

What do you mean? I’m brainstorming for the next election!

Hey, it’s never too early to start alienating voters for 2028!

Hmm, I like the energy here, but it might be a little aggressive, even for the Democrats. Remember, the tone you want to hit with Muslim voter outreach is, “Condescending paternalism as you explain what’s best for them,” not, “death wishes mixed with xenophobic dog whistles about their welfare babies.”

Woah, infantilizing the population of a majority Muslim town for having their, “feefees,” hurt, even though they’re the ones most likely to personally know someone who is a victim of the violence in Gaza? That’s the boldest outreach strategy yet!

That’s a good point! Don’t ask if people voted for Harris. Assume they didn’t! It’s important to attack anyone who might even just empathize with these voters, otherwise that empathy might lead then to question the DNC’s decisions!

Ooh, I like this one! Using cynicism to mask a, “lesser of two evils,” argument, while still ignoring how emotionally devastating it would be to vote for someone who is materially supporting the slaughter of your people? This one could be the 2028 platform!

Focusing only on the outcomes of the actions, while not examining the circumstances that led to the actions? Yes! That will make sure this never happens again!

Yes, that’s good! Let’s pretend it’s not our problem that they didn’t vote for the Democrats, even though we clearly cared about the outcome of the election! And if we blame them for the alienation they feel, we never have to examine what the party could have done differently! It’s brilliant!

Yeah, boil it down to trite moral lesson! That’s perfect!

Lots of great voter outreach in the comments here! Keep telling them they deserve to see the genocide of their people! If you alienate them enough, they’ll definitely vote for you next time!

Edit: I wanted to thank everyone for all the great ideas for Muslim outreach in future elections! I can tell by the downvotes that not all of you liked what I had to say, but if I learned one thing from the Harris campaign, it’s that you can’t care what a community thinks of you, no matter how many votes it costs you!

Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.

Yup. We gotta vote for them this election, but replace them in the next. Otherwise, we’re just hitting snooze on fascism for another 4 years.