That’s alarmingly low - it suggests that it doesn’t take much for any given influencing campaign. If there are fifteen discrete such campaigns in play, that’s just 1/100 of everyone. Now imagine that there’s tens of such campaigns, and the numbers look even more reasonable. Also, it’s probably cost-effective at this scale since this has been with us a while, which is terrifying.

What I want to know is: what percentage are human users that ate the onion metaphorical tequila worm¹ and are now parroting these trolls?

1. Follow me here: drink a bottle and eat the worm inside. You’re not thinking straight and did something you wouldn’t do if you had your wits about you, or maybe a friend nearby that is thinking clearly. Propaganda has a way of forcing you into a phantasm by emotional manipulation, making it easy to jam all kinds of nonsense into your head. Extending the metaphor, said propaganda also lays out how to defend your worm eating habit as though it’s totally normal to do.

I mean, maybe if you bake a stone cold potato that was in the fridge and then cook it for two hours? But even then we’re probably talking about a handful of minutes at the most.

Which car company bar did you say you work for?

A major one.

I totally get that: use the right tools and you’ll be okay. This applies to many technologies in this space.

With respect, I still take this advice like hearing “look out for rattlesnakes if you’re hiking there.” It might be safer to just hike where there are no rattlesnakes, instead.

I swear, overcoming fixed functional-ness is like a superpower when you can apply it.

I once shared a small office with a co-worker. I had the idea to move the desks away from the walls and place them back-to-back, diagonally, in the middle of the room. Other co-workers scoffed and remarked at how dumb and unconventional this looked. Then I explained that we each now had nearly full privacy from each other, much more personal space in our respective corners, no more glare from the window, and nobody could sneak up on us from the door anymore. Things got pretty quiet after that.

Useful? Not exactly. But you’d never look lazy or idle, that’s for sure.

/me goes back to get second folding chair.

Pascal went to military school.

I’m not in love with the idea, but a language that cuts out the BS has a sudden appeal when on a group/team project.

I take this as less of a “I can’t use this intuitive feature reliably” thing and more of a “the truth table will bite you in the ass when you least expect it and/or make a mistake” thing.

Tofu chili was nasty. It’s probably a texture thing

Even Mapo Tofu still has real meat in it for the right texture. For a 100% veggie option, you gotta go extra/ultra firm. I’ve only ever seen it at the local Korean grocer though - “American” grocery stores don’t carry stuff with the right texture. TVP might work too.

I’d go looking for another mindflayer offering “spotless mind” services and pay to have those memories removed. Assuming they can be trusted, of course. The hard part being that they’re still mindflayers.

The worst ones are safety rules: those are (sometimes) written in blood, with stories to match.

Company: Provides amenities and services that would (technically) allow a person to live on premises. Pays you enough to retire early if you didn’t have to bother with rent or a mortgage.

Also company: “We can’t hire you without a permanent residential address.”

I also worked at multiple places that had fully decked out break-rooms: free food, game consoles, VR, and 60-inch TVs. Everyone was afraid to use them for fear of looking like they were screwing around. Except the interns. They used the hell out of that stuff.

I’ve seen this kind of thing too many times to count. First it was in high school, then the workplace.

1. Person notices there is no explicit rule for a thing, or maybe there’s a loophole somewhere
2. Does the thing
3. Annoys someone
4. Now there’s a rule for the thing

Some people just want to push the envelope. Other times, people can have a poor grasp of social norms, or they simply don’t respect others. But on the other side of the coin, people get annoyed for good and bad reasons; sometimes, no reason at all.

Bottom line: it’s a mess, so we get rules. But nobody wants to spend time writing these things and enforcing them, so there’s usually a reason/person/event why they’re there.

Yes. Not enough daydreaming about winning arguments, mixed with intrusive thoughts and general self-loathing.

I forgot about the smells. My sense of smell shifted to be way more sensitive to sugars and starches too - it was tough.

I didn’t bother trying to track fat intake and wound up losing 2+ lbs a month that way; not bragging, but my goal wasn’t all that big. I probably could have done things faster by cutting more fat, but it was already hard enough.

I was educated by another user on how the process actually works.

Fascinating, isn’t it? It’s like each of us is just full of survival mechanisms.

That’s awesome. Glad that’s working for you! If you have any tips on building willpower for the rest of us, please share, and thank you.

I agree on those stats. Don’t forget: Atkins himself died from heart disease. But hey, at least you have the pics to prove it.

Were it me, the potential for humor would be impossible to ignore:

Me: “This diet is miserable, don’t do this.”

Also me: shows pics looking more shredded that a bowl of mini-wheats

I feel you. Hard cheese, bacon, and pickled eggs were my go-to. Anything with strong flavors. I did that for about a year and then stopped once I hit my weight goal.

In the middle of all that, I noticed that vegetables started to taste sweet as they do contain small amounts of sugar. Especially cabbage. I kind of miss that.

A workaround I employed was to eat lots of kimchi. Fermented foods like that contain sugar alcohols which taste sweet(ish), but are not digestible as such.

That’s basically the Atkins diet (Keto) without enough nutrition. It’ll function like a very short, very uncomfortable, malnourished crash diet.

You’ll spend the first two weeks craving carbs and sugars like your life depends on it. It’s awful. After that “break in” period, the cravings mostly go away.

But that’s not all. So much as lick a piece of candy or chew on some bread, and you’ll get a large dopamine rush followed by carb-craving mode again. If sheer willpower and deferred rewards are at all a problem for you, this might feel like one of the hardest things you’ve ever tried to do.

Edit: now that I remember, my grandma tried a “cottage cheese and grapefruit” fad/crash diet back in the 80’s. Turns out that one has been doing the rounds for almost a century. IIRC, it doesn’t work since it’s easy to underestimate how insanely difficult this is to do.