The Usenet post I linked to claims it’s originally from the 1st quarter of 1990, but who knows if that’s accurate or not. I actually can’t find a good source for whether Stumpf is the original author or just the one who posted it to rec.humor.funny.reruns, but it’s usually attributed to him at any rate.

But yeah, fairly ancient by internet standards. I remember first running into it in the 90’s

Apple’s OS updates – whether iOS or macOS – haven’t been very good for years now

“The narrative” that everybody should have voting rights?

Oh no, the horror!

A rotary notary, if you will

Agh, figures that the Russian Volunteer Corps was apparently in on the action. It just never fails to boggle my mind that the majority of the anti-Russian militias that are fighting in Ukraine are so far right that they think Putin isn’t fascist enough.

Like, yeah, it’s great that they’re fighting Russia, but holy fuck is it this hard to find people in Russia who aren’t complete pieces of shit and are also willing to fight Putin?

I think it’s interesting is that so many autocracies keep up the pretense of democratic and rules-based governance; even North Korea has elections. Same with political trials like you see in so many authoritarian regimes, from modern Russia or China to Nazi Germany – it’s like autocrats need to be able to pretend to themselves that the system they run is fair and just, and that they’re not just tyrants who govern with impunity and enforce rules arbitrarily.

What I don’t get is why? Why bother when it’s immediately obvious to everyone that it’s all a sham? Why not drop the pretense, which everybody knows is just a pretense?

the only political group that supports Putin in Portugal are the communists.

I’m very much a leftist and this is just something I haven’t managed to wrap my mind around. How can anyone claim to be a leftist and support an extremist right wing dictator?

We’ve known about the dangers of overusing antibiotics for decades now, and it’s become obvious that this is yet another case where we won’t do near enough to combat a problem until it’s already much too late and practically disastrous

Surprising that Euronews is still running pro-Ukraine news considering it’s now owned by Orbánists

Some plans less so than others.

Also, I like this framing of users as the enemy. Matches my experience, really.

Wasn’t expecting a fucking rainforest

Orders a

On the other hand… do you want them getting out there to infect the rest of the galaxy?

Who said anything about giving them supplies?

I’m sure the free market will solve this! (yes, /s)

The persecution fetish conservatives have is just incredible.

Well, I guess when you’re a psychopathic narcissist it’s hard to imagine that everybody else isn’t one too, so it’s understandable that they think we want to put them in concentration camps because that’s what they want to do to us.

Where we should really start is yeeting Musk and his supporters out of the fucking solar system (shooting them into the sun would be a waste of perfectly good delta-v)

it has been bought by an Orban linked company las year.

Fucking what. Noooo, damnit

Fucking Russian psychos use the majority of their missiles on civilian targets and now suddenly Putin has a problem with (alleged! I frankly don’t believe it for one second) “indiscriminate shooting from various types of weapons, including missiles, at civilian buildings, residential buildings, and ambulances.”

Many Lemmy instances do just fine without them though, and unpopular extremist views are still unpopular. Frankly that sounds more like a case for moderation than downvotes.

One of the main problems I have with downvotes on Lemmy is that when people browse All, niche communities tend to attract a lot of drive-by downvotes (which is why many instances that host them opted to disable downvotes) that tend to drown out votes by people who are actually in those communities and push the content lower when using a sort that takes votes into account.

Yes there’s all sorts of lofty ideas about how downvotes should be used, and eg people are not “supposed” to downvote things just because they disagree (and no I’m not talking nazism here). Never goes that way in real life.

Oh yeah it’s not like it makes any real difference – although the points may be fake, whether we like it or not people do seem to let them influence how they look at a comment or post. It’s just a bit silly that so many people cling to the idea that downvotes are a valuable tool (apparently we’d be overrun with nazis if we couldn’t downvote things)

Love it that you’re getting downvoted for this highly controversial comment.

Proof #52895167698 that downvotes shouldn’t even be a thing