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.

  • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    My city has a local company that rents storage units and they have entirely too many locations relative to the population of our city such that I believe they’re a criminal enterprise. I believe they construct so many new buildings for money laundering purposes and to facilitate human trafficking and drug running out of them.

    Breaking news, I just googled them and one of the owners was convicted in his 20s of trying to sell poached falcons to Saudi Arabian royalty. The plot thickens.

  • eldoom@lemmy.ml
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    2 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.

    • hperrin@lemmy.world
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      Cities tend to be more light polluted, but less racially divided than rural areas, though.

      I think it’s more about exposure. If you’re never exposed to a certain kind of people, some people just won’t trust them.

    • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
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      Take it one step further and that sense of wonder is why I feel the powers that be reacted swiftly to squash psychedelics and shut down all research into them, unless the research benefitted the national security cartel, of course.

      It’s difficult for rulers to maintain capitalist control when you can eat a piece of paper and have the wonders of the universe revealed to you and realize that it’s supposed to be about loving other humans. Makes neverending consumption and 9-5 work seem really lame in comparison.

      • eldoom@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        The ceilings one is way simpler.

        When you spend a lot of time in a place with low ceilings it makes you subconsciously feel trapped. After a while of it your actions and behavior will likely start to reflect that and you will probably be less likely to do anything that you can for your future.

        You don’t get that in a place with higher ceilings.

  • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Insurance companies randomly deny claims just to see if you’ll fight it. If you don’t, they’ll know they can deny more if your claims in the future. This is illegal, but if it’s a “bug” in the software or “AI” than they get away with it. Actually it’s harder with AI since people are more skeptical and have already caught them doing it. However this may be due to the AI being trained on the intentionally buggy software.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      They actually do use software to find deniable claims that would theoretically have to be reviewed by a doctor. The doctor pulls up a while page of to be denied claims and theoretically gives them the legally required review all at once in the 30 seconds before he hits the button. There is no reason NOT to feed propensity to accept fake denial into the equation. You could even white wash it by presuming that prior denials that stuck were indication of bad claims and assert you are measuring their proclivity for filing wasteful claims.

    • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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      I believe this based off my limited interactions with insurance companies. I was in a car crash that was 100% caused by the idiot who was fucking with their phone instead of looking at what they were crashing into. Their insurance company tried to stick me with months of rental fees from when my car was being repaired. I eventually filed a complaint with my state insurance commissioner and told their insurance company what’s up, they got right on it after that. Literally, that same day they had multiple people contacting me to say we’re all good now and apologizing about the misunderstanding.

  • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Just posted about this in a different thread:

    The US senators: mitch mcconnell, ted cruz, and lindsey graham used fraud to win their respective seats in 2020. All three were in tight races according to the polls but all three won with bigger margins than was to be expected.

    This idea came from a few articles that were discussing this issue a few days after the election, then those articles all just disappeared.

    Maybe the articles disappeared because there was no fraud

    Maybe the articles disappeared because there was?

  • noughtnaut@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So many people believe that Covid was a way to scare us all indoors, so they could change batteries in all the birds.

    That’s preposterous.

    Birds use rechargeables, that’s why they’re always sitting on the power lines. Like, duh, wake up sheeple.

    • bi_tux@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      no, you don’t understand, the feds invented the perpetum mobile, birds only sit on power lines to confuse people like you!

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    2 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.

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    I don’t think this is too far out there but I haven’t seen it around much. Epstein was a honeypot.

    He got an absolutely disgusting sweetheart deal for his initial conviction resulting in him being released for 12 hours a day for work and a 13 month sentence. Now the attorney that cut that deal (illegally, mind you) was Alex Acosta. He was nominated for secretary of labor in 2017 and faced scrutiny for that deal, to which he said he was told epstein “belonged to intelligence” and to “leave it alone.”

    Supporting circumstamtial evidence includes ghislaine maxwells father having known connections to MI6, mossad, and the KGB, though he died in 1991 so that doesn’t necessarily imply much. Additionally, the FBI has HARD FUCKING EVIDENCE including tapes which doubt less contain CSAM, yet nobody has actually been arrested as a result.

    The issue is that this relies on taking Acosta at his word, and he’s kind of a huge piece of shit. It could be possible that he was buddies with epstein and gave him a deal and covered up the evidence because he was involved too, and presumably enough powerful people in government were involved to keep everything quiet.

    Sounds crazy when spelled out, but it’s hard to imagine why else nothing would come of the mountains of evidence that probably followed the raids, or why epstein wasn’t closely watched after his initial conviction.

    • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I’ve always felt similarly. It’s a hustle most of the time, just pumping out content that’ll get a reliable number of views from a dedicated audience.

  • Stern@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Personal reddit conspiracy theory as to why image hosting is on site:

    1. r/fatpeoplehate exists, does its thing (hating fat people)
    2. They get some images removed from imgur, the image host du juor of reddit at the time.
    3. They go on the offensive and start harassing fat imgur workers.
    4. The subreddit gets banned.
    5. Under a year later, reddit puts in image uploading.

    My theory is that 3 resulted in imgur hitting up reddit and threatening to block the site if they didn’t reign in fatpeoplehate. Reddit did, by 4, because the alternative was no images and that would absolutely fuck reddit up. This in turn leads to 5 to prevent that powerplay again.

    • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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      Probable. And Reddit didn’t want to do so initially because, of many reasons, this way they also offload the liability on Imgur.

  • toe@lemmy.world
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    Despite being one of the highest earning movies of all time, no body watched James Cameron’s Avatar.

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      I have never seen so much money spent on something so boring and predictable. Don’t get me started on Avatar 2, that was a 3 hour water simulation that still somehow managed to be naff because of annoying cartoony characters.

      My pet (very) silly theory is that both were a cover for military investment in fluid dynamics simulations and they had to hide hours of 3d renders and water simulations in plain sight.

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      I was dragged along to see it at the cinema in the (then) new 3D format (versus the old red/blue glasses).

      Took me 10 minutes to realise the story is Pocahontas, so I’ve always thought of it as Pocahontas Smurfs. And the 3D, while a cool novelty, gave me motion sickness something fierce.

      While clearly no money was spent on the script, it did move animation technology and adoption along quite a bit.

      Gobsmacked a sequel was made.

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      I watched it in theaters six times. I love that movie. Sure, it’s the same story as like 6 other movies, but it’s got big sexy blue aliens.

    • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
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      I never watched Avatar, because i know how it will be. There’s only a certain amount of special effects that can keep me focused on something that lacks in all other areas.

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        I tried watching it like 3 times and gave up after 30-40 minutes it’s so generic.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    That covid hijacks people’s brains with a parasite that makes them act like it doesn’t exist or isn’t a big deal if it does.

    I don’t actually think it’s true, it’s just that if it were, nothing would be different.

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    2 months ago

    Conspiracies like flat earth are put in the spotlight to make real conspiracies look stupid.

    • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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      iirc last check it was about 50/50 people vs bots. The problem is people running bot farms or AI generated channels know exactly how to tailor content to the various algorithms used by big social media companies and thus actual human content is actively burried.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The fashion world is in a war on pockets, so they can sell more handbags. The fewer and smaller pockets we have, the more accessories we need to buy. First they came for women’s pockets. Now they’re trying to make cargo shorts unacceptable for the same reason.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      Nah, this is just pure economics like all the abusive shit in the video game industry, or the so-called “pink tax.”

      If gamers really cared about microtransactions, season passes, gambling mechanics, things like that, they’d stop playing games from studios that do that shit and only play games that don’t or none at all. But gamers love that shit more than rock & roll sex drugs. Gamers will pay extra to experience the abuse before it’s even ready. A lot of the indie gaming sphere especially on PC is largely free of that shit, but the so-called AAA industry is only thinking of new ways to twist the teeth out of their customers. I think they’re going to start charging console customers for controller support next year. Make sure to stock up on verification cans.

      Women want shampoo that smells like mango and pants that fit tighter than her own skin more than they want money in the bank or a roof that doesn’t leak. A few might bitch about it on Twitter and then proceed to do absolutely nothing about it. The store brand unscented bar soap that cost $6 for 9 bars is right there. The “Compare active ingredient to Head & Shoulders” shampoo for $2.49 a quart is 4 feet away. She’d rather eat her hand than wash with those.

      There is no business model for women’s pants with pockets, because pockets just don’t work well in skin-tight clothing especially on a curvy figure. Even if you made the pockets have plenty of room the outer cloth wouldn’t permit any room, and if you do cram anything in there it’ll print hideously. As much as you hear about “We want pants with pockets!” there hasn’t been and won’t be a cottage industry for this because pants that are loose and straight enough for functional pockets are already mass manufactured and sold in the men’s section. Women can and occasionally do buy men’s pants to have working pockets. By far most of them buy women’s skin tight jeans, I presume to prevent blacking out during high G maneuvers. There’s also enough women in the world who will willingly pay $1500 for a purse to keep Gucci Vuitton in business.