The Dems had a weak message and they struggled to deliver it where it mattered.

They raised a record amount of money, and spent it on door-knocking and cable ads talking about a rebounding economy, the middle class, and diversity.

The voters who decided the election live in apartments and listen to podcasts, and see an economy in the shitter, and see themselves as working class (not middle) and just an average schmuck.

Total disconnect.

They didn’t even need to move to the right to reach these voters, and they alienated a bunch of the left by trying.

Mike Johnson: LA LA LA LA LA LA LA 🙉

Looking forward to the Matthew Miller clips from this one.

I think the two most salient points here are:

1. Podcasts

TV and radio are dead, social media is a wasteland. Podcasts are reaching young folks, especially men.

Which brings me to…

2. Young men are in freefall

They’re doing worse than previous generations did at their age, across every metric you can imagine, and they’re also doing worse than young women.

That’s not to say we should stifle women’s success!

But if all you have to offer young men is a lecture on their unearned privilege, I think it’s not surprising that they take their business elsewhere.

Importantly: This doesn’t make them right.

But if we don’t figure this out, we’re fucked. We have to have a positive message for men who are struggling and desperate. If we don’t offer a plan, guess who will?

DNC in 2028: We’re finally ready to learn our lesson from 2016+2024 and listen to our base. We hear you loud and clear: “No more female candidates.” We will be reallocating AOC’s delegates to Chuck Schumer.

Voter: Why does the economy suck so bad?

MAGA: Because brown people.

Harris: You’re crazy, the economy is doing better than ever!

Simple as.

It’s the private equity playbook. Sell all the real capital assets to cover existing debt, rent replacement assets from the owners themselves using new debt, run operations so lean that you burn out 100% of your labor force, then declare bankruptcy and settle your own debt while keeping all the assets.

It has already destroyed swaths of the private sector, and now they wanna do it to the entire economy.

At least we live in a time when evil dumb rich guys are still mortal.

If you’re interested, my comment was basically a sample of this fantastic interview with Anand Giridharadas: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2023/04/02/yanss-256-anand-giridharadas-wants-americans-to-change-their-minds-about-their-ability-change-other-americans-minds/

You’re catching downvotes, but you’re not wrong.

The emotional vibe from the left is: “If you’re not enough of a leftist according to my unique standards, you’re basically the worst person to ever exist. And don’t ask me to explain, cuz it’s not my job to educate you.”

The emotional vibe from the right is: “Welcome home, you clever protagonist you. You knew the truth all along, you just needed the courage to admit you knew it. Hey, while you’re here, I’d like to introduce you to a few other things you might not realize you already believe.”

The supreme irony is: The right doesn’t believe in democracy. They don’t believe you can persuade people and get them on your side and move forward with a cohesive vision of governance. Yet they’re doing a better job of persuading people than the left is.

That sounds…

Easier to get almost right than actually learning the subject.

Much, much harder to get completely right than actually learning the subject.

So yes, basically the archetypal use case for LLMs.

I switched to Spacebook

I was using the mobile app.

A couple months ago, I logged into an old Reddit account. It only took a few minutes of scrolling before it happened.

I had to scroll back up and try again, and record my screen so I could doublecheck my count later.

35 ads or “recommended” posts (i.e. not from anything I subscribed to) in a row.

I’m curious what that means for the overall percentage of the average user’s feed.

Edit: Okay yall… I appreciate all of the free technical support, but it’s really not needed. I was just documenting some findings.

But since everyone is so concerned about improving my Reddit experience, here are a few things to consider:

• I’m a mobile dev, so I don’t mind enduring a shitty UX for the sake of finding out what other companies are doing with their apps. If I’m going in with a mindset of curiosity, it really doesn’t bother me. In fact, I want to see the worst parts.
• Even if I had been going in just to have a pleasant scrolling experience, the reason I opened Reddit at all is because my wife had my phone for a while (due to toddler nonsense, we had swapped phones and she was stuck sitting in the hallway for a few minutes) and she had decided to open the app, so the decision of app vs. website was kinda made for me already.
• Even if she had considered using the website instead, I wasn’t logged in because I only use private browsing (again, mobile dev, so when testing web flows I like to make sure there is no saved web data).
• Even if I was already logged in, it’s an iPhone. While I do use an ad-blocker, the ad-blocking capabilities of Safari are pretty limited, so I’m not sure it would’ve improved much.
• Even if I was on Android, I’d probably still not have any extensive ad-blocking enabled, because I want to stay relatively vanilla in my setup to reduce confounding factors when testing.
• Even if there was a genuine opportunity here for my setup to be improved… I didn’t ask for that, and swarming people with “have you considered doing it the right way?” when they’re just making a basic observation doesn’t create a great atmosphere for the overall Lemmy experience.

Oh hey, a consistently relevant topic:

Why is conservative comedy so weird? (The Schneidecker Paradox) - Maggie Mae Fish

But if she said “I strongly support the second amendment”, they’d have no problem. So where’s the line? Is saying “bodily autonomy” okay, or is that too far? “Freedom”? “Liberty”?

Regardless, it seems like she’s within the letter of the law, so get bent losers.

I take it from your exasperation that you want a game to “just be good already”, from the very start. So I’ll exclude anything that takes too much thought or investment to start having a good time.

• Deep Rock Galactic
• Tunic
• Pacific Drive
• Gorogoa
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker
• Hand of Fate 2
• FTL
• Styx: Shards of Darkness
• House of the Dying Sun
• Hitman Go and Lara Craft Go
• VVVVVV

“There’s just no record of her being there or not being there,” reporter Peter Doocy said. “To our knowledge, there’s no photo of her in the McDonald’s apron, which now there is a photo of Donald Trump in the McDonald’s apron.”

Truth is a constuct.

That video was a mess. Miller trying his best to not allow an actual question.

To be fair though, that reporter’s gotta step it up. You can’t give these guys an inch of wiggle room.