I don’t see how the Middle East war could escalate into a worldwide conflict. Ukraine, maybe. The Middle East conflict spiralling out of that territory? Nah.

Russia are not that bothered about Iran, and the US want to keep Israel around for the geopolitical influence they get from them, but I don’t think Israel is worth enough to the US to make them risk a direct confrontation with Russia.

Worst case scenario, Israel and Iran beat the shit out of each other while everyone else watches from the sidelines, making the occasional, half-hearted demand for a ceasefire. At most, Russia and US will continue supplying their respective friends with bombs and arms to profit off the conflict for as long as they can.

They’ll be so ugly though. I guess it’s ok, cos who needs mirrors anyways.

Don’t confuse authoritarian regimes with fascism. China is an authoritarian state running a diluted version of communism, but it’s not fascist. Russia under Putin is leaning more towards fascism these days for sure, but they’re not fascist outright yet.

Maybe what the hexbear folks gravitate around the most is the idea of authoritarianism. The flavour doesn’t matter as much.

Surprised Ireland didn’t even make it to this ranking.

I take a selfie when I get the haircut I like and show them the picture next time. Nice and easy.

inb4 in 8 years time “Greensky a.k.a. Trust Me Guys This is THE New Twitter Forever” gains a million new users in the last 3 days.

Isn’t this basically Firefox’s version of the third party cookie block that Chrome rolled out a few months ago? Or am I missing something here?

I mean, it’s good news either way but I just want to know if this is somehow different or better.

The problem is that not everyone looks for that human-to-human emotional connection in art. For some, it’s just a part of a much bigger whole.

For example, if you’re an indie game dev with a small budget and no artistic skills, you may not be that scrupulous about getting an AI to generate some sprites or 3D models for you, if the alternative is to commission the art assets with money you don’t have.

Similar idea applies to companies building a website. Why pay for a licence to download some stock images or design assets if you can just get a GenAI to pump out hundreds for you that are very convincing (and probably even better) for a couple bucks?

Realises devs have always joked about their jobs just being about copy-pasting solutions from StackOverflow 80% of the time

Oh God…

I’m not saying a traumatic childhood is a good reason to dismiss someone’s crimes as an adult. Whether you had the best life as a kid or not, hate crimes must be punished all the same.

Our responsibility as a society in all of this should be to give these people the support and education they need before they find it in these cults of hate. This is where we’re failing big time.

What is exactly the bullshit part about what I said? That a bad childhood usually leads to a fucked up adulthood? Because it does. Of course, everyone copes with trauma or a tough childhood differently, and some people do move on to lead surprisingly well adjusted grown-up lives. But for the ones that don’t, having a poor childhood experience is a very common factor.

It took me 2 mins to find this research paper to evidence what I’m saying: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-016-2906-3

I could probably find a few dozen more if I spent more time looking.

Being an unloved —or worse, abused— child is quite often the root cause of a vast number of affective and personality disorders people develop later on as an adult.

Try this engine

https://search.marginalia.nu/

Or a SearXNG instance

https://search.disroot.org/search

You may also be interested in the Indie Web movement. This site is a great resource for it, with yet more links to indie sites and blogs.

Finally, not quite what you asked but here’s a freebie, in case you didn’t know about it:

https://wiby.me/

It’s an old web search engine. It only indexes pages from the 00s and earlier.

Not even that, the author just uses WINE.

1998 is the superior one.

Look up the Firefox Containers extension.

Krita for anything graphic design. Krita’s UI layout is a lot more similar to Photoshop than GIMP, which makes the switch easier.

This makes sense. HOWEVER. That’s not really what’s happening here now, is it?

I find it mildly upsetting, to say the least, that if Ted Bundy or <insert serial killer> had decided to run for president for shitz and gigglez, they could’ve totally done it.

It’s obvious: he was making good money with the latter, but not with the former.

Kamala Harris is the obvious candidate from the Democrat side. The real question is, will she manage to catch up to Trump?