I’ll go first: r/kitty. One of the hundred grillion cat subs back on Reddit, the culture in this one was you posted a cat picture, and the only word allowed in the title or in any comments or replies was “Kitty.”

Someone is using that subreddit for covert communications, I just know it. Either on the level of “if u/PM_me_your_nostrils posts an orange cat, we attack at dawn!” or there’s some steganography going on with the pictures, but that subreddit was too stupid to be as active as it was.

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    Some US states that keep enacting highly unpopular anti-trans, anti-woke, sexist, racist legislation are doing it in an effort to get left-aligned people to move away and not consider going there, with the goal of skewing elections in their favor.

    • rainynight65@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      It would be more compelling if some US states weren’t also openly and unabashedly engaged in active voter suppression.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      How is this a conspiracy, the whole red neck stereotype of “We don’t like your kind around here” shows how this has been part of common knowledge for a long time.

      I’m not saying it’s obviously true, I’m saying I thought this was a popular belief.

      • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Most politicians seem like grifters and change positions to whatever is popular with their base or donors though. So, it does seem like this is a part of some grand-plan. I don’t think many Republican politicians actually care about women’s sports or who uses which restroom, yet they manufacture outrage and campaign on it. This kind of stuff was on no “normal” person’s mind before media started focusing on it.

  • eldoom@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I think that people being in overly light polluted areas for their entire lives is or at least is a major part of what’s wrong with society these days.

    When you go out at night and look at a sky completely filled with stars it makes you feel a certain way. Full of wonder, small, curious. Conversations always go in the “what if” or “what do you think about” sort of direction. It really puts you in your place in a strangely calm, thoughtful , and healthy way. And the more you can see, the better. If the Milky Way is visible it just puts you in awe.

    People don’t get to experience that very often, if at all, when they live in a populated area.

    I think that is by design.

    If you cannot just go outside and get that huge feeling of idk existential wonder, you’re going to get hard coded into your personal fears and beliefs and all that whatnot. This drives the population apart. Meanwhile, all forms of light pollution measures are either deemed too expensive or just not enforced. At least in my area. And large amounts of the population live somewhat close to an airport. Never really gets dark at night near an airport…

    Anyways that’s my ted talk about how light bulbs are ripping society apart by its very fibers. Next up is how ceilings are a conspiracy to keep the poors underfoot if anyone wants to hear it.

  • JakenVeina@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Also related to reddit, since that’s where I was always inundated with this shit, before moving here: the constant stream of Genshin Impact leaks that come out, that the whole obnoxious subculture is built around, are just released by Mihoyo, intentionally, under the guise of all the anonymous leakers that constantly come and go. Seems to me like the only explanation for how CONSTANTLY leaks come out, and how they’re basically never actually damaging to the game or the company, while being REALLY effective at stirring up obsession in the fanbase, and driving people to invest more time and money into the game to be prepped to get the next new character immediately on release.

    Also how so many of the leakers would release extremely accurate stats and numbers, but then drop statements like “if I release any more than this, I’d be risking my safety” or “since everyone’s been asking about it, I’ll go ahead and confirm X, but after this I’m gonna have to go on hiatus for a while, until things cool down”. Seems like nonsense meant to either inflate the leaker’s ego, or rile up the fanbase.

    • monk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      That is not a conspiracy that is common marketing, especially in music industry with their “leaks”

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    JD Vance was forced in as the Trump VP pick by the Heritage Foundation so that when Trump either dies or stops cooperating with them on Project 2025, they already have a man in place to take over. And that’s likely the reason for the assassination attempts.

    If Trump dies, they get Vance (a true believer…unlike Trump who just wants the power to stay out of prison) at the top of the ticket.

    • sudo@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      I believe the official narrative is JD Vance was Donald Trump Jr’s shitbrained idea. Trump Jr and Vance personally both roll with the same “intellectual dark web” theories, neo-eugenics and such.

  • Andrew@piefed.social
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    3 months ago

    There’s a user here, who was ‘101’ at reddthat, then piefed, then feddit.org, and was 911 at lemmynsfw, and is currently 911 at programming.dev, who posts a bunch of articles over a week or so, then deletes their account and moves on to another instance. They’re up to something, surely. (the only real downside to this behaviour - that I can think of - is that new instances won’t be able to get their posts, because Lemmy doesn’t return posts for deleted users)

    • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      What does this mean? What is 101 and 911? I understand 101 to be the basic information of a course and 911 to be the number for emergencies. I’m trying to understand what you wrote here.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Elon Musk is paying anti-immigration and anti-trans groups like the Tanron network to spread their rhetoric on social media.

    Oh wait that one is true. Filthy piece of shit.

  • Lianodel@ttrpg.network
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    3 months ago

    Paper straws were pushed by big corporate polluters to build a negative association with environmentalism.

    Plastic straws are single-use plastics, but seem unexceptional by those standards. It’s almost a meme that they’re being singled out like they’re the single greatest source of plastic waste, or uniquely damaging to ocean life.

    On top of that, there are way better ways of reducing straw usage. I’ve used bioplastics that seemed way better. You could redesign the lids. You can do the plastic bag thing and charge people a nickel for a straw or whatever. Hell, you could just not give straws with every drink, and plenty of people will just drink from their cups and glasses. Instead, we get paper straws, something that is so obviously a bad idea it sounds like a joke, or a metaphor for a useless invention. Often served with cups and lids made entirely out of plastic.

    So you get a bunch of people who have their drinks kind of ruined by a frustrating straw. It’s a small thing, but it’s just a little nudge away from environmentalism. You build an association with disappointment and inconvenience. Maybe it doesn’t cause a big sway, but it makes people maybe a little more anti-environmentalist than they already were, or just less passionate about environmentalism.

    • Zanz@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The people who are responsible for the turtle with the straw in the nose video where from the paper straw company. That happened right before the corn plastic straws at the market and after the video all plastic straws were banned in most metropolitan areas, that banned the corn plastic “environmentally friendly” straws before they even hit the market. The paper straws have forever chemicals in them and are essentially Teflon coated so they’re not environmentally friendly at all.

  • Elextra@literature.cafe
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    3 months ago

    The addition of microphones and cameras to things like phones, computers, watches and other technology is to normalize being surveiled as well as minimize other privacy violations. We now have fridges that have WiFi capabilities now and often in the presence of some sort of device with a camera due to phones.

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Pretty sure they said conspiracy theory, not fact. At this point it’s so believable if a theory it might as well be fact, in my opinion.

      • Elextra@literature.cafe
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        3 months ago

        Well I guess for me is wondering if this trend started because people thought it would be either functional or cool vs businesses being malicious and their aim was more surveillance tolerance?

        People dont think its weird to have a camera on a laptop or phone anymore. Instead, people sometimes are now buying phones for the picture quality… And fridges with WiFi because the tech is cool or something.

  • TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz
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    3 months ago

    That Absolute, see also here, is something nefarious, possibly used for industrial espionage. My company is a client and using one of its IP addresses, I could see documentation that was quite concerning. In the background, it checks all of your files for anything that looks like a password, a social security number or a credit card number, then uploads these files to some server to protect them… What’s really weird is that I cannot access the same information from an outside IP address, but here’s a review, corroborating parts of it. Make of it what you will!

    • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
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      I read through that and maybe I missed where they are uploading personal data to a server? What I read is that it checks the computer and files and can interpret when there are personal data things on a PC in order to provide a score to help IT know how sensitive a computer’s data might be?

      It says the identification is done at the endpoint and the contents of the file are not available. I don’t see anything about copying and storing that data somewhere on their systems that I saw. Maybe I am missing something…

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        My company may appear similar, but I’ve been through the code - when they say they quarantine some stuff and create a legal archive of other stuff, hey really do, and no ones getting to it without jumping through a lot of hoops

        • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Interesting. I’ll have to read up on this stuff. I’m working on making a career jump into IT so this will be right up my alley to learn about. Thank you.

  • 01011@monero.town
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    3 months ago

    Couriers have tiny cameras all throughout my home and wait for me to go to the bathroom before they show up with my parcels.

  • Anderenortsfalsch@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 months ago

    Years ago I had fun with “what if the US never actually went to the moon”. I did not believe it, it was just a nice plot idea, we even made a pen & paper oneshot about it. Nowadays I have no whatsoever fun in thought experiments like this, because the real threat of someone believing it to be true. I want to enjoy “birds aren’t real” or “giraffes do not exist” or … the worst is flat earth. It started out as a joke and now idiots try to proof the earth is flat, proof by accident it isn’t and then question rather their methods than their belief system. We just can’t have nice things.

  • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
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    3 months ago

    The Jan 6th temper tantrum was instigated as a response to the BLM and other Covid-era protests. The owner class was getting nervous about the working class protesting about things that matter, so they riled up some of their disposable morons to storm the Capital as a way to discredit direct action. And we’re already seeing the effects; whether it’s a labor strike or a student sit-in, we’re told by centrists to “protest peacefully” and not inconvenience anyone, aka don’t protest.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      3 months ago

      BLM was taken by state actors if not outright organized by them just like jan6 idiots.

      BLM era protests got too hot for the government tho, so deff got spooked

  • Match!!@pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    content warnng: Magic The Gathering

    facts: a couple of weeks ago the commander rules committee, the independent group that governs the popular Commander format, started receiving death threats after they banned some boring ass broken cards (jeweled lotus? dockside extortionist? nobody is ride or die for those)

    as a result, the rules committee turned over control of the format to Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro, the makers of magic the gathering

    fact: last year after some magic the gathering content was leaked, Hasbro send literal pinkertons to harasss the youtuber leaking it and recover the leaked goods

    conspiracy theory: hasbro hired the pinkertons to make those death threats against the rules committee so that hasbro could seize control ove the most popular independent format of magic