Man, 2020 (Covid) was so depressing with all that. Nurses not wearing masks and denying the effectiveness of vaccines was such a kick in the crotch for my morale.

The problem with science is that consensus changes but often with tremendous lag.

The whole anti-fat movement I grew up in, for instance. It never made sense to me so I've always been a fan of fat. I always eat my chicken skins, always eat (at least chew) the fat on my steaks.

People used to worry about cholesterol a lot but then we found out dietary cholesterol doesn't really matter for most people.

Turns out sugar is a lot worse than fat for you. Which they knew back then but industries being what they are ... They use money to influence the research. Now they're finally removing the refined sugars but now they're pumping like three, four maybe five artificial sweeteners in there and pretty much all of them are linked to various problems...

That's great for science, when done honestly, it's striving to be better and it can change when it needs to. But these days there's a lot of bad science out there and it can be difficult to discern what is good science from what is total bullshit.

this pretty much sums up the enshitification to me. sure at its core its wealth disparity but I was a stem major and first they choked off funding and now its just plain ole antiscience. I mean he put out a presidential order about vaccine timelines.

The most of them think being anti-education is a kind of science in itself. They never looked at any of that as based in what was tangible, so shifting the role of who gets to define reality onto youtube gurus and facebook groups wasn't a huge change

i grew up in an anti science family, seems pretty normal to me.

Cruelty is a virtue in this age. Years of teaching people not to care what others think, no wonder they grew up to be casual sociopaths who lash out as an expression of their rugged and brave individuality

Whenever you hear someone talk about how little they care take a second to consider what they're actually bemoaning in the context of living in a social fabric.

I would love if you could go into more detail about this. I've been a hermit for the past twenty years, so I haven't noticed a decline.

convenience is all that matters for the average consumer.

people who collect things are not average consumers, they are enthusiasts.

I can kind of understand DRM in subscription streaming services. What I don't understand at all is people paying to "buy" DRM-protected media where you don't even get a local copy, like all major digital movie purchase platforms.

Most physical media still has region restrictions and other license restrictions. Look at the Xbox and it refused to play people's physical disks... Sometimes you can get a region free DVD/BR player but often not. And all those have DRM built in. So you're not streaming the DRM you just physically own the DRM. Cool.

Reminds me of the south park episode of honey boo boo. The bar just keeps sinking... Someone send James Cameron out to do what James Cameron does best, being James Cameron. So he can go pick up the bar at the bottom of the ocean.

The bar is made of depleted uranium and will break right through rock bottom.

Yeah and also that gambling is normalized on two fronts: For adults we’re normalizing betting on fucking everything like if it’s gonna rain tomorrow,
And for children we’re normalizing gambling in video games. Gambling used to be a niche, almost something you’d be ashamed of. „I lost my money on the ponies“ would be something you’d tell your best friends when talking about your dark past.

Over under on your body's liquification time on approach to the sun?

Holy shit people bet on people getting cancer? That is so depraved

I wish that were a surprise, but it was all so dreadfully predictable. There's an author that I used to follow around the 2010 timeframe, who wrote on his blog that when fascism came to America, it'd be in the form of "corn pone Nazis," not the stylish Hugo Boss-wearing ones. (Sadly, he's scrubbed those old entries, perhaps because it's too embarrassing after he went MAGA.)

There were plenty of warning signs earlier than that, too. The only thing we didn't know then was the exact timing.

Ads stuffed into everything.

Native advertising in my Reddit feed before I quit Reddit.

Unskippable ads in YouTube. Remedied only by Firefox and uBlock.

The sheer quantity of ads on Amazon Prime and CBC Gem keep me from those streaming platforms. Others will go that way soon enough.

The last straw were the ads in the launcher I used to use for Android. NovaLauncher got dropped in a hurry.

I'm worried about ever buying a car that will hold me as a captive audience to be advertised at. Ads on screens in bathrooms, elevators, and at gas pumps all irk me.

I’m going to borrow your comment to say: Ads when I pause a movie.

Way back in the day, there were isps which showed you add constantly but you got internet for for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g