I hope everyone will leave Reddit and go to Lemmy or Piefed. If you still have a Reddit account might as well say fuck it and start promoting Lemmy/Piefed until you get banned.

I hope nobody buys a Tesla. It’s an inferior car so it’s not even about politics anymore, you can get a better car for less money by going with another brand.

I remember Brave was popular among MAGA-type people during Trump’s first term. I suspect it’s likely the same.

The logo has a striking resemblance to one I remember seeing on a big pro-Trump community. It’s described here https://www.vox.com/2019/8/29/20838289/trump-fascist-lion-head-bull-testicles-video-twitter basically the logo is associated with Mussolini.

In addition if you check the Wikipedia article you’ll notice this:

In August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital and the Digital Currency Group.[13]

Moreover some right-wing type people expressed their “solidarity” with Brendan Eich for his anti LGBT stance so they used Brave.

I see, I guess I’ll have to see if I can find any troubleshooting information or take it up with Zip.

Good point, I updated the title.

I really hope the stadiums are totally empty. We must not repeat the mistakes of the 1936 Olympics. Boycott the world cup and also boycott all their sponsors and advertisers and demand they pull their ads and stop funding FIFA which is a totally corrupt organization.

For what it’s worth I read the whole thing in what felt like one or two minutes and I don’t think I’m a particularly fast reader. I think it looks longer because there are not many blank lines. It seems well written but I guess I do slightly get that AI feeling too, it just might be because he/she is a good writer so now people think good writing is AI, sad it’s coming down to this.

Wow! That is so uncanny it’s scary. That is exactly what MAGA is doing. They have extensive propaganda websites and news stations that are very repetitive in particular emphasizing the “big lie” which is false claims the 2020 election was stolen.

People should try reading more books and watch less TV/streaming precisely for this reason. Also maybe if you want to watch a movie consider watching older movies.

This is a fascinating article/podcast that talks about this but is focused on how it impacts your attention span and has data: https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans

Mark: So I was very surprised to learn that TV and film shot lengths have decreased over the years. They started out much longer. They now average about four seconds a shot length. That’s on average. If you watch MTV music videos, they’re much shorter. They’re only a couple of seconds. So we’ve become accustomed to seeing very fast shot lengths when we look at TV and film. Even commercials have shortened in length. Commercials used to be much longer. Now it’s not uncommon to see six-second commercials, even shorter than that. Now it’s a chicken and egg question. We don’t know if TV and film have affected our attention spans on computers and phones. We don’t know if our attention spans have affected the decision-making of film editors and directors. We don’t know exactly if there is any causal connection we see these two parallel trends.

It could be the case that directors and editors are influenced by their own short attention spans when they create these film shots or it could be that they’re creating short film shots because they think that’s what the viewer wants to see. But this has become quite ubiquitous. In fact, on YouTube, there’s a particular YouTube aesthetic which uses jump cuts. So when you’re watching a YouTube film, the film becomes very jumpy. The natural pauses that people make when they speak it is removed. So the idea is to pack more content into a shorter amount of time. So we’re seeing short lengths of content from all directions. It’s not just what we’re attending to on computers and phones.

You aren’t going to die fighting me because I would refuse to fight my friends and allies.

Also shouldn’t you at-least try to decouple focusing on the worst of the worst companies first?

One of the most important things people and countries can do to fight back against this is switching to renewable energy as fast as possible. Fossil fuel companies have long supported Republicans. If you can stop buying fossil fuels you stop supporting Trump with your money.

If you’re in a position where you can get solar please do so! In addition what will really help is contacting your politicians and demanding a faster transition to renewable energy.

It’s not shocking. Fox news always lies. That’s why I wish everyone would just shut it off. If you see a TV playing that crap like at the gym or a waiting room ask them to change the channel or change it yourself. Especially if you’re alone in the room you can even edit the channel list and remove Fox or add parental control and block the channel. Universal remotes or a smartphone with a USB-C IR blaster can let you control almost any TV. Or even simpler if the TV has physical buttons or the cable box has buttons just press those and to change the channel. This is all TV dependent of course but just food for thought.

I’m sorry I have only one upvote for you. I wish I could give you way more. You’re right about this overall!

I will mention though if you already own a device you paid for and it’s not making Apple any money you might as well keep it and use it until the end of its usable life.

I’m reading this and I’m disgusted beyond belief and terrified too. I try to do all that I can to help and others do too but we really need help. No matter what country you’re from you can help too.

What I hope is that you can do everything you can to ensure the far-right can never take over your country, advocate for media literacy, and ensure people boycott the biggest Trump-supporting companies in the US like Twitter, Tesla and Uline and encourage a faster transition to renewable energy because it’s the fossil fuel companies who’ve been longtime backers of Republicans.

Are you in? Would you like to help?

I totally agree with you. I literally made my username “BoycottTwitter” because it’s so important and so basic.

It’s Trump’s strategy he learned from Roy Cohn. https://www.npr.org/2024/12/26/g-s1-40039/deny-deflect-delay-jeremy-strong-channels-trumps-mentor-in-the-apprentice.

We see Trump “Deny, deflect, delay” a lot. He’s already tried to deny it. He’s trying to deflect it and he’s also delaying it.

The solution is to leverage the fact that he’s delaying it and keep it in the news cycle as much as possible. Turn his strategy against him and make him as unpopular as possible. The less popular he is the less support he will have if things get even worse and he tries to rig/cancel elections.

Russia has already being waging hybrid warfare against the West through a massive campaign of disinformation, bots and propaganda. In addition we do it to ourselves as well. In America we have so much propaganda, it’s insane. We have Fox News, Newsmax, so many conspiracy theorist podcast hosts like Alex Jones (who has ties to Russia), Joe Rogan and way more. We also have billionaires funding our elections and supporting Republicans. Of course Germany is a lot better than we are but they have the AfD which receives backing from Elon Musk. 30 years ago I guarantee you almost no American could predict we would have fallen so far and have a president who’s loyal to Russia instead of our country. Likely if you were to tell an American 30+ years ago about this they would explain why they are “exceptional” or different from other countries. But you can see we were wrong. Never assume it can’t happen where you are too.

One key mistake which powered this all: how so many Americans fall for this is because we didn’t do nearly enough to stop it. Our education is underfunded and we don’t learn media literacy and civics. Now I ask will other countries repeat our mistake or will they take action?

I urge you demand your politicians really strengthen and enhance your education system by adding media literacy and emotional skills like conflict resolution, emotional regulation, attention span and impulse control, give the next generation the skills needed to be resilient against Russia’s hybrid warfare against Europe. Public media can also step in and educate adults and there can be workshops and classes. Students should be urged to pass the skills they learn along to their parents and grandparents.

Some people don’t appreciate what they had until it’s gone. I hope people can learn to appreciate and understand what they have while of course working towards making things better too.

No need to wait, we can start right now.

One thing we can all do is switch from Microsoft Office (if you or someone you know is using that) to Libreoffice. Especially important that everyone cancels their Office 365 subscriptions. I singled this out because this is likely the way most people are directly funding big tech. Office 365 funds OpenAI which donated $25 million to Trump.

Also of course cancel your Copilot and ChatGPT subscriptions too.

In addition Reddit users should switch to Lemmy or Piefed.

I believe even despite the article I posted that we will win big in the midterms but we must keep pressure up and fight everyday for a future we can believe in.