Public payphones in the streets and emergency phones alongside highways have also been removed (at least in my country). So yeah, our society expects us to have our own phones with us whenever we’re away from home.

I’ve checked the Tennessee subreddit and it doesn’t seem very active. The first post is 17h old and about the special election. The news article that was posted, is not positive for the republican party. The reddit comments are overwhelmingly against Van Epps. The post itself was posted by a mod. https://old.reddit.com/r/Tennessee/comments/1pajj2w/tennessee_congressional_race_becomes_unlikely/

This doesn’t look like a rightwing echo chamber to me. Maybe the outsider that was calling for action, was removed because they take their rule about removing agitators seriously. Imo there may still be a problem of too strict modding, because of how inactive the subreddit looks.

The discovery is being cut up, wtf?

First time I heard about that, apparently Texas republicans want it moved to their state for populist reasons, irregardless of any practicalities. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/the-smithsonian-might-have-to-cut-space-shuttle-discovery-into-pieces-to-get-it-to-texas The space shuttles used to be transported on the back of a specially adapted Jumbo jet, which isn’t going to exist anymore, hence the cutting up + exorbitant cost to transport it.

It used to be that the first result to a lot of queries, was a link to the relevant Wikipedia article. But that first result has now been replaced by an ai summary of the relevant Wikipedia article. If people don’t need more info than that summary, they don’t click through. That Ai summary is a layer of abstraction that wouldn’t be able to exist without the source material that it’s now making less viable to exist. Kinda like a parasite.

It’s not going away any time soon. There’s currently 2 to 3 times as many humans as what would be long term sustainable with the way that we live. That means that it’s going to be a problem for at least many decades, but more likely a few centuries. It’s definitely not yesteryears problem. And sustainability should always remain a concern, in everything that we do. Many countries (not the USA obviously) are already taking steps to be more sustainable, but it’s baby steps compared to what is needed.

To sustain the current amount of humans, we are using unsustainable methods. That makes us unsustainable as well.

Some estimates from Wikipedia: “Climate change, excess nutrient loading (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus), increased ocean acidity, rapid biodiversity loss, and other global trends suggest humanity is causing global ecological degradation and threatening ecosystem services that human societies depend on.[9][10][11] Because these environmental impacts are all directly related to human numbers, recent estimates of a sustainable human population often suggest substantially lower figures, between 2 and 4 billion.[12][13][14] Paul R. Ehrlich stated in 2018 that the optimum population is between 1.5 and 2 billion.[15] Geographer Chris Tucker estimates that 3 billion is a sustainable number, provided human societies rapidly deploy less harmful technologies and best management practices.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population

Would the outcome have been the same without people in the media repeatedly bringing this to everyone’s attention? Probably not, because there would have been no public pressure against it, while the shadow groups that want this would have still been lobbying the politicians.

Something bad is going to happen.
Some people advocate to stop that bad thing.
Even more people are holding their clutches that the bad thing might happen.
Because of public pressure, action is undertaken to prevent the bad thing from happening.
Thanks to those efforts, the bad thing is successfully averted.

Some random person: that bad thing was never going to happen, look at all those gullible people who were panicking over nothing, we could have just done nothing and the outcome would have been the same.

Also known as the “preparedness paradox”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox

A direct link to the article from op: https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/

Reading that list of tactics was kinda depressing, because I could name a bunch of them with their debating name, even when they’re not being named as such by the author. Gish gallop, misrepresentation, throwing shade, ad hominem arguments. I never learned any of these terms in school, yet I know them now, bravo internet. But here they were used not for the low stakes of winning an online argument, but with real life negative consequences for a bunch of seemingly well meaning people. I hope kids now are being prepared in schools for this new online reality, but I fear that’s just not the case in most countries.

A non exhaustive list of what makes them awful: https://expertbeacon.com/why-is-paypal-so-bad/

Afaik, the issue that was making the most victims, was that they were facilitating scammers that targeted sellers:
5. Good Luck Recouping Losses as a Seller in Disputes.
89% of sellers experienced dispute resolution problems with PayPal in 2021 surveys. Despite providing evidence the item shipped or service rendered, they lost cases and sums averaging $622.
This is driven by PayPal‘s buyer-favored review round taking 1-2 weeks. This favors scamming buyers at the expense of legitimate businesses.

Iirc, there was a time when Paypal always sided with the buyer, irregardless of evidence or past track record, the review process was useless. Once scammers picked up on this and began scamming sellers en masse, Paypal still kept their policy unchanged for years and sellers started to raise their prices on platforms that forced them to accept Paypal (ebay used to do this). Ebay has since tossed Paypal off their platform. I don’t know if Paypal ever improved.

When calling that number, the caller will need somekind of proof that they are in control of the car that they are trying to opt out of ads. Afaik, the easiest way to accomplish that when requiring a phonecall, would be pairing phone and car. But obviously Stellantis is not going for easy with this setup, so this is purely speculation on my part.

Apart from how insane it is to put obtrusive ads on a car dashboard, having to link your phone to your car and then call a phone number to opt out of touchscreen display ads is 🤯

There is going to be a reason that they’ve set it up like that.

Most European countries do not use first past the post, but proportional representation with multiple elected representatives per voting district. There is far less incentive for politicians to gerrymander with proportional representation.

It appears that in the future, Itch will allow creators to opt out of payment providers, meaning that it’s probably on a per game basis, not per platform. That Itch and Steam are not making a per game solution now, is most likely because their current software doesn’t allow it and they need time to rework it. Itch has promised various changes already, Steam has been mum afaik.

Source for Itch: “For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.”. https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

I only use Steam myself, so I hadn’t checked Itch Io’s communication yet. I don’t know the platform myself so it’s quite possible that I’m misinterpreting this, but to me it appears that Itch Io will allow creators to delist payment options that they are not compliant with: “For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.”.

Source: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

Do you have a source of where they are saying that?

I have seen an article about the Australian political action group that was claiming credit for getting the games banned. The story behind the start of the controversy.

And I have seen an article about the communication from Steam that they were banning games which were in conflict with the rules of their payment providers. The result basically.

But I’ve only seen conjecture and speculation about what went on to get from the start to the result. I haven’t seen any article that spelled out exactly what the different payment providers demanded from the gaming platforms, nor anything about what they discussed in between them.

Edit: after 12 hours there’s 4 downvoters and 0 sources. Another victory for vibes over facts.

I don’t get why the gaming platforms are removing games instead of removing the objecting payment providers as a payment option for purchasing those particular games.

If visa doesn’t want people to purchase game X with Visa, then remove Visa as payment option for buying game X.

Blabla, google it, yet you ignore all evidence that was posted to the contrary of your beliefs. As expected you come up empty handed because you have nothing except your own vitriol.

I get that you are a bitter and resentful person, but that is a choice that you are making. I’ll try to explain below and I get that the text will be longer than you are used to, but I do implore you to read it. I’d like to try and help you get some perspective.

You don’t have to make up things and present them as facts. You don’t have to resent other people who try to show you that some beliefs that you hold, have no factual basis. We don’t try to inform people like you out of malice, but it’s to help others to be more informed and to help people in general make more informed decisions.

I suspect that your wilful ignorance has often brought you into useless conflicts where you ended up resenting the other participants because they were dismissive of you and your opinions. But that’s not their fault. You are the one chosing to reject facts and resenting those that do not accept your beliefs over factual evidence. Your resentment and frustration has it’s origin within your own choices, which has one major potential upside for you: you can chose to stop being that bitter resentful person.

Don’t make things up, respect other people’s opinions, be open to the possibility that some of your beliefs might not be true. Do those 3 simple things and you will find that interactions in your life will on average be much more agreeable and positive for you.

Show the proof then. insulting others and making a fool out of yourself doesn’t count as proof, so do try to come up with a proper science based source.

Your willingness to make things up, your doubling down when it becomes obvious to others that you made stuff up and then finally your reaction to jump to hatred of those that demonstrated that you make stuff up … It all makes you come across as unhinged.

I post literal proof that the shit that you made up, is made up. And your answer is to double down and throw insults around, and even now 2 weeks later you’re still at it. Somehow you’re not very convincing.