If you’re referring to the youtube thumbnail trend, it’s because it helps people choose videos without reading channel names. You know who it’s from just by looking, you see the title, you’re more likely to click.

In other words, the office nerds at Mr. Beast Inc. crunched the numbers and discovered that they get ??% more viewers by putting Jimmy’s face in the thumbnail, and every other youtuber took that as gospel.

Do you have a source for that?

That origin is apocryphal, and likely based on a misunderstanding of a text that simply used the original phrase

I’m not saying I won’t buy high end. Just not new. There are so many used parts in circulation, and some of them in pristine condition. They’re cheaper, work almost as well (if not just as well), and keep e-waste out of landfills/being stripped for precious metals. I get to pat myself on the back and save some money, what could be better?

It’s a crap shoot, but as long as you can verify the supplier (or at least ensure return/refunds) it’s been okay.

I’ve gotten 2 GPUs and 4 CPUs through eBay, and only one of the GPUs was a scam—still got my money back within the day when it didn’t arrive on schedule (the lister had already deactivated their account)—the RX 6600 is working great so far, and the CPUs have held up in some office workstations and server for a few years now.

I’ve also gotten tons of used ram and used ssds and hdds. I’ve had a few times in my workplace where a few sticks of OEM ram and HDD failed, but haven’t had that issue with any of the used stuff (work or home).

I may be really lucky, or I may be the right amount of cautious (or both), so YMMV—definitely check with others for their experience before you decide to take the risk. Just keep in mind that if you go looking for scams and horror stories, it’s gonna seem like that’s all that happens, and the reverse holds if all you look for is success stories.

>$1500 on an all new parts DIY PC complete with a Windows license. Nowadays everything’s outdated and these same parts would be like $800 max. Even back then I could have saved at least a couple hundred just by swallowing my pride and buying used.

I haven’t bought brand new tech since, and I have not regretted it yet.

What really is going on in the US right now?

Fascism

Is this worse than the first term?

Yes

Why’re legal people being kicked out?

Fascism

When is it time to really consider leave?

November 6th, 2024

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So people don’t think I’m just fearmongering, here’s an in-depth explanation: the Republican party learned from their mistakes during Trump’s first term, and not only figured out how to use him, they had a plan for dismantling the government from day one. Unfortunately, their plan was to keep people focused on survival while they took away any public services, leaving only the parts that could be abused to enrich the billionaires.

As usual, they utilized divide and conquer techniques to keep the working class fighting amongst themselves about irrelevant issues like gender and immigration and the price of everyday goods. Now they have to make good on those promises to keep their supporters from turning on each other, but since they cannot control the price of goods through sheer will alone, they have to focus on purging the scapegoated groups.

They achieve this by attacking anyone and everyone who is an immigrant or visitor, documented or not. They are not trying to enforce the law, they are abusing the paramilitaristic forces they have control over (ICE) to see how much they can get their will done through sheer force.

The reason this works is because everyone in ICE “just follows orders” assuming if anything they did was out of line, someone else would stop them/clean up their mess. Our society operates on one big ethic of “that’s Someone Else’s Problem™.” But here’s the thing: you need enforcers willing to enforce the law, the system of checks and balances, at every level. Right now, there is no one arresting Trump for violating court orders, and everyone’s unsure if they even can because the Supreme Court ruled Presidential Immunity (the president can break most laws if he believes it’s “for the good of the country”).

On top of all that, the bureaucrats who would usually stand in the way of such gross misconduct are being purged. The red tape is being burned to the ground. The peons are keeping their heads down, “just following orders” as aforementioned, and the high ranking officials with weight to throw around are either following their duty of office—resigning if they refuse to follow orders—or being replaced with sycophants. The sum total effect is that there’s no one within the hierarchy who will stand up to abuse of authority.

As such, the presidency is free to do whatever he wants.

And he has. The other lesson The Party learned was to just unleash a constant barrage of policy. No matter what doesn’t pass, there’s a flood to hold back, so some is guaranteed to get through—and every bit that does is that much more power centralized in his office… And the dam will break eventually.

Meanwhile the liberal “opposition” will continue to waffle for three reasons: one, they’re still trying to play by the rules which have long since been discarded by the GOP; that only serves to benefit their opponents who use that against them. Two, they are easily manipulated by rhetoric, thinking they can bring GOP over to their side by engaging in the same rhetoric as the fascists (e.g. “so much for the party of ‘Law and Order’”); what they fail to comprehend is that the rhetoric fascists engage in is meaningless to the fascists, it is just a smokescreen: to a fascist, everything is about power, and words are just empty containers that you use to manipulate people into doing what you want (a form of power). Three, ultimately the Democratic Party is also in the pocket of billionaires, their interests are the same as the fascists: concentrate power into the hands of the wealthy, privatize the government.

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If you can, leave. It doesn’t get better until after the fascists are violently deposed. They will stop at nothing less. Unfortunately, they have all the people who bekieve in doing that kind of thing on their side, so it’s only going to get worse.

And by worse, I mean that they’re already making plans for camps. They will market them as firstly “work retreats to heal lost souls,” or some similar rhetorical mixture of corpo-jargon and christianity (the 2 major ideologies) to justify rounding up anyome they deem a useless eater. Or maybe it will juat be called “Prison Labor” (which is really just constitutionally allowed slavery) and they will find whatever excuses to criminalize people they don’t like.

First it will be “illegals,” then it will be the homeless, addicts, the mentally ill, terrorists, or anyone else that is labelled a threat to society. And collateral damage will be acceptable (and encouraged) this whole time; so sometimes legal immigrants will get scooped in, or trans people who are clearly mentally ill by virtue of being trans, or anti fascists because antifa is a terrorist organization (because big brother tells me it is), or people who express leftist ideals publicly, or gun owners who haven’t pledged allegiance to The Party, or PoC with non-european names, or autistic people, or disabled people (because their secretary of Health and Human Services has “proven” that that disability is fake) or anyone else they believe they can “fix” by forcing them into labor.

And when those people don’t magically get “fixed” by labor, well… they’re just taking up too much space, aren’t they?

And the public will largely have one of three reactions: 1. “He can’t do that, that’s illegal! Someone (other than me) should really do something about that! I hope they do sooner than later… Anyhoo, better get back to struggling to survive in the worst recession since the Great Depression”; 2. “Well, business as usual, as long as it doesn’t affect me”; 3. “Hahaha FUCK YEAH, FUCK THOSE [bunch of slurs] AND ESPECIALLY THOSE [more slurs].”

If you can, leave. If you can’t… Well, read up on your rights and practice as many as you can.

• sent from the concentration camp I’m now fated to because writing all this will probably labelled an act of treason by The Party.

there’s actually aword for this type of mixed idiom: malaphor

Wait, how does that work? It seems like it should take the same energy to melt it either way.

presumably they mean using something besides your body heat to melt it

That’s more of an turn-of-phrase, no?

That is a very vague measure. Their health is better? They have more stuff? They have technology that didn’t exist back then? They live longer?

Or are they more fulfilled? Do they have more of their psychological needs met? They’re happier?

Maybe this is the trauma from the unhinged, raging, exploitative robber barons talking, but…

I can’t in good conscience support any economic system that ties political power to economic power. One extreme will always do their best to accrue and centralize that power, and will be effective by virtue of the fact that the power creates more opportunities and ways to accrue more power. The other extreme will always be ineffectual because they shun that power, seeing the necessary rejection of certain values as inherently corrupt. The middle will struggle against both to maintain a status quo that always has a stronger pull toward the former group, effectively recreating the political ratchet.

I can’t in good conscience support a system that allows people to effectively own others, regardless of how well they treat the people they own, regardless of how many owners one of the owned has to choose from. The dynamic has a strong tendency in favor of the owners and requires a lot more effort from the owned to fight that.

I can’t in good conscience support a system that allows people to own pstches of the earth, especially beyond those which they occupy or personally use. Yes, I want everyone to have somewhere to live, and have that place be free from unwanted interference by others. No, i won’t support a system that in theory has no hard limits against someone powerful enough buying up all the land and then renting it out to everyone else for a profit.

I can’t in good conscience support a system that allows people to own ideas, and even necessitates them doing so to “earn their keep” (worth as a citizen/right to survive). I feel like I’m in bizzaro world when i think about how there are people oddly comfortable with the fact that people have put patents on living things, or that there are people who can tell you when, where and how you’re allowed to express certain ideas/arts/mechanisms/songs/images/sounds/formulae under threat of being stripped of power you managed to accrue (whether or not it came from aforementioned ideas), imprisonment, and in some cases slavery.

I won’t support any political system that doesn’t give me at least as much power as everyone else. I have enough emapthy to realize that pure democracy is a better compromise than authoritarianism, especially considering most other people either feel the same or just want a system where their needs get met.

But mainly, it’s just plain illogical ti support any given political system as an ends when 1. The world is a constantly changing place, and any rigidly defined system will inevitably fail regardless of how well it fits to the context in which it was created. And 2. I am aware of better alternatives—to paraphrase what some stranger once said to me: idealism is what we aim for, reality is the compromise we make; in other words: if politics is a negotiation, why lead with a compromise?

Hopefully this isn’t too Murrica-brained. When I see news of proto-fascist movements on the rise in the UK, Brazil, Italy and Australia, or extreme class disparity in Singapore, China, and Japan, or ethnic “cleansing” in China, Turkey, Rwanda, and Liberia, or just something as simple as how common scams and fraud are from places like India and Nigeria—indicating a need to resort to intercontinental theft to survive—I feel like my experience of politics and economics isn’t as limited to my geographic region as I’d like to believe.

I can’t use a laptop for work (graphics intensive, need a powerhouse) but I would if I could. I love being able to use it literally anywhere I go—at my desk, in bed, on the toilet, on vacation, on the bus, at a cafe, etc—and…

I installed a headless Debian OS, added a keyboard-focused window manager and I don’t have to futz with the trackpad nor find a place to put an attached mouse. It also is a much slower drain on the battery. Best of all worlds.

I use it for web-browsing, word-processing/spreadsheets, checking email, making memes, coding, managing my home network, controlling my headless SBC, and modding. Also occasionally for cyber CTFs or remoting into my desktop at least to do so.

I can agree with the google placement if you’re assuming the searcher has experience with search operators, most of the time if I’m not wasting time crafting my search results to exclude all the SEO spam sites and Q&A sites written with the same amount of padding as a middle school book report, DuckDuckGo will give me better results than Google.