Is this the right place for this? This is just my own ranting and sour grapes about my own self-involved Lemmy drama situation. If it's not appropriate, let me know.

Anyway, here's how to make someone look like an asshole:

1. Post something wrong, but also aligned against Israel. In this case, propose that any claim of rape of Israeli civilians on October 7th is a "false account."
2. Wait for people to correct the false claim because they care about the truth. Push back a little. Let things play out as they do.
3. Go somewhere else, and report that the person is taking this pro-Israel stance, so clearly they're a genocide supporting turbolib. Let people agree with you, and let the reputational damage ensue.

This works incredibly well. As far as I can tell, there are users on Lemmy who almost everyone (everyone who cares about this kind of thing) thinks are Israel-supporters just because of skillful repeated use of this tactic. I even specifically told this user that I was aware of what they were doing, and literally just wanted to send them the UN report and then disengage because they were wrong. They still managed to seize on a single word I used and spin it up into this claim that I was "running around citing that UN report" and spin up a little echo chamber of people who are convinced that I'm the turbolib now.

Great stuff

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/nyregion/ebikes-scooters-cyclists-nyc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ME8.ozwk.IrOKiBi0PXLw

It drives me crazy every time I use it

There was a dream that was Rome, and this is not it.

Source: https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2025/07/16/van-orden-pocan-capitol-confrontation

and fuck the UK goverment

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33343275

Pickle Pizza

In recent years, after being impressed by a few local nonprofit BigORG branches (branches of national BigORGs) and finding that they claim to need/want volunteers (even to the point of desperation if you take their appeals seriously), I've approached them to find out about volunteering. As expected, they want to do a background check (almost certainly through the state police - it's cheap and easy here) and want you to release them of liability for physical injury and all that sort of thing. Neither are a big deal to me. But what IS a big deal is my privacy, and I've found a few of these orgs have volunteer waivers such as

"PHOTOGRAPH PERMISSION: I give permission for the BigORG to use, without limitation or obligation, photographs or other media that may include my image or voice to promote or interpret BigORG programs."

and

I hereby grant and convey unto BigORG2 all right, title and interest in any and all photographs and video/audio/electronic recordings of me, including as to my name, image and voice, made by or on behalf of BigORG2 during my Activities with BigORG2, including, but not limited to, the right to use such materials for any purpose and to any royalties, proceeds or other benefits derived from them. I understand that I will not have any ownership interest in or to such photographs, images and/or recordings, I have not been provided or promised any compensation to me, and I hereby waive any rights, privileges or claims based on any right of publicity, privacy, ownership or any other rights arising, relating to or resulting from the photographs, images and/or recordings.

This is highly infuriating. It's mindblowing to me that BigORGs think that for the "privilege" of providing free labor in order to assist them in carrying out their charitable "mission", that volunteers should also allow large quantities of their PII to be captured by the BigORG and exposed to the public in any manner the BigORG may choose, for as long as it may choose, and further, without recourse or compensation of any kind.

In the cases of the two BigORGs I've quoted above, I've tried to negotiate with them, have asked "how about we just strike that one paragraph, the rest of the waiver is fine, and we'll be good to go". The response is a big fat "No" and they show me, a perfectly capable, reliable and generous volunteer, to the door. Only spineless volunteers are needed apparently, ones who will give anything to volunteer at BigORG and won't make even the slightest pro-privacy waves when doing so.

SmallORGs I've volunteered with have not yet reached this level of entitlement, at least not here. Sure they may want to take some pics for social media posts from time to time, but so far have just warned us in advance to get out of the picture (which I have done) and it's all been fine. I don't know how long they will remain well-behaved with regard to PII and public disclosure thereof. I'm not paying for the "opportunity" to volunteer, either with cash or with personal info to be used for marketing, and the more these orgs demand it the less I'll be volunteering.

(I might add that I'm not talking about any kind of community-service mandatory volunteering, though these BigORGs may take that kind of volunteer as well from time to time.)

From Billionaire Sean Parker:

The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'

"And that means that we need to sort of give you a dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you more likes and more comments."

It's a social-validation feedback loop ... This is exactly the kind of thing that hacker like myself would come up with, because it's exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. the inventors, creators — me, Mark, Kevin Systrom of Instagram, all of these people — we understood this consciously. And we did it anyway

God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7jar4KgKxs

Not only did Taco Bell give me way to many sauce packets as usual. I received them in individual little bags. Fucking environmental waste. Especially frustrating when I said No sauces. They never listen.

In New York City, parking & camera violations are public.

Not sure who is doing this exactly, if it's DDG or Reddit or someone else. I was looking for a comparison of epic vs steam and noticed that the description of the search result is AI-generated, instead of actually showing anything from the thread.

A user asks why they should buy games on Steam rather than Epic, and gets various answers from other users. Some of the reasons include Steam's features, performance, community, and exclusivity.

Shout out to businesses that email tracking information and link to their own systems instead of the package delivery service's tracking system. These third party tracking site plug-ins often lag behind the information provided to them by the delivery service's site.

Special shout out to those who hide tracking information behind a required account login when they could simply provide the tracking number in the email.

Most special shout out to sites that do not allow you to know anything about a particular order unless you click through to their site and log in. It makes tracking past orders a nightmare.

• Original source

Other sources:

• Naples News

• Washington Post