If I was that rich, yet so addicted to junk food, I’d at least get higher quality junk food. My patties would be made from organic beef, in buns that don’t fall apart, with vegan cheese from that one brand that I found exactly once, can’t remember the name of but really loved (I fucking love cheese, but that one kocked out any real cheese from the cowmpetition)…

The food would come in reusable containers with non-porous surfaces that are easy and efficient to clean, delivered fresh and hot, made to order and delivered by students (cheap labour) on bikes (saves gas money), generously tipped for their express service (to incentivise continued quality service).

It’d still be cheaper than a decent meal, still be a pig move, still just as greasy and unhealthy, but at least it wouldn’t be so embarrassing. And if it really had to be McD’s, I’d pay to have it packaged into those generic foam containers that don’t make it super obvious and delivered by unbranded delivery drivers (like generic DoorDash, Uber Eats or something).

Given the inertia of moving social platforms and the spoiler effect of fragmentation, I assume ex-Twitter will remain the leading platform for a while still unless Musk manages to run it into the ground at record speed.

I don’t have any hard numbers on the rest, unfortunately. I personally favour Mastodon, and I believe some national governments have officially adopted it and are running their own instances, which might tip the scales a little if people see that as endorsement.

Bluesky overall seems to have the advantage in terms of marketing (probably because they have the advantage of money too). I have no idea about Threads, but being from the same company as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp may give them an advantage in terms of existing users for those services. I would expect they try to intermesh these services at one point or another.

It’s hard to predict, given that many people might just follow whatever their favourite personalities choose, and once enough users have gone there, other popular people may choose that platform too for its larger userbase, drawing more people in… It can snowball either way.

There’s also the ongoing debate about interfacing the other options with Mastodon. I’m not going to take a stance on that here, but it might be a solution to the split “some of my favourite people have gone here, the others there, but I want to keep up with both in a single app”. I think there would have to be a user-level option in Mastodon to block entire instances to allow people to choose not to get shown content from those services.

As an aside, I think that would be a good idea anyway, for Lemmy too. If I want to be able to browse All without seeing specific instances, I don’t want to have to look for an instance with that exact list of defeds.

Do you think the risk of losing is preferrable?

It’s a fucked up situation, but until enough of the voterbase is convinced or he no longer has to worry about the election, he’s in an awful bind.

The unpleasant truth is that, to some extent, the US is still a democracy, and the opinion of the people matters. If the majority of the US populace doesn’t see it as genocide, it is democratically right for him to act on that opinion.

Which means the fault isn’t with him alone - arguably, he could take the risk and attempt to inform people - but also with the voters, the propaganda that misled them and the fucked up election system.

Dangerous to democracy? Where’d you get that idea? I’m not the one trying to install an authoritarian plutocracy.

I’m a staunch believer in educated democracy, but that requires education in the first place. Education regressives have been undermining forever, because it would inform the people of their actual democratic power.

where it actually matters

Which would be? What, in your opinion, actually matters?

My priority is a sustainable and enjoyable future. One where you can grow old without worrying about our pension or affording medical care. One where you no longer pay a cut of your work to a person just becaude they’re rich already. One where you can do the job you love without worrying about how well it pays or whether you’ll get fired.

The Liberals keep bartering for compromise instead of progress, gradually ceding ground to the Conservatives. The spoiler effect means an actually progressive third party has no chance and risks handing power to the regressives by splitting the vote. Because all the Liberals have to do is “be less bad”, you get the choice between right-of-center and far right. This isn’t democracy, it’s slowly dismantling it.

I’ll take the Liberals, because they’re “less bad”, but it’s not a solution. It’s buying time in the hope that we can actually fix the underlying issues.

Ah yes, they’re so intense about fighting capitalist oppression they’ve circled around to… checks notes defending police brutality and advocating for the further privatisation of every public good and dismantling all worker protections.

The difference between “eat the rich” and “feed the rich” is really just one syllable, right? Almost negligible.

(Also, no, they don’t call everyone fascist. They just don’t think being liberal is enough for change, when the “liberals” of the US have a history of complaining about the things they don’t stop the regressives from doing. There’s a difference between calling people “naive and spineless” and “actively pursuing oppression”.)