The 3rd party apps are closing at the end of this month, which means there'll be somewhere around a week or so of people realising just how bad the official app is, plus decreased quality content as the actually-motivated people who post things continue their gradual migration away from reddit and driving redditors to seek other places to gather.

There's no solution in the same way that there's no "solution" to winning rock-paper-scissors. The cycle is endless because the desire to be in control is a key part of human nature, whether that be an authoritarian "I want everyone to do what I say" or a more oligarchic "I accept that there's others at my level, so we can cooperate so that everyone else does what we say", and any attempt to change those systems requires an equivalent amount of force that can all too easily lead one into side-tangents of trying to keep said force focused.

As a side note, Machiavelli identified the cycle in politics in his "Discourse on Livy" - a powerful and strong-willed individual takes power (e.g. Caesar or Napoleon), his descendants wield power with less and less efficiency until in time the aristocracy seize the reins, and they get more and more corrupt and out of touch until finally the people rise up and enforce some level of democratic sway. Unfortunately, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, which is exhausting, and so over time things run down until some powerful and strong-willed individual takes power and it all starts again. It's not purely linear - an aristocracy can be subsumed into a strong individual leadership (e.g. the popes in the 19th century grabbing power back from the cardinals) and a king can be overthrown by a democratic uprising (e.g. Louis XVI of France - though technically it did go through a brief aristocratic moment, as he re-convened the parliament to try and get around the nobility who wouldn't fund his wars, indicating his powers had weakened). But in general we oscillate between these three modes of social organisation because of the difficulty in centralising power and in then keeping it from being corrupted (i.e. using it for selfish purposes) once it is centralised.

Eternal September? At this time of day, at this time of year, localised entirely within the fediverse?!

I'd estimate that the next wave will be sooner, at the end of the month when the 3rd party apps shut down and a lot of people suddenly realise they have to use the official app and go "oh wait, is this what that protest thingy was all about?" It probably won't be the critical-mass point (at a guess that would happen around the time old.reddit is closed), but it will likely make some big waves

They think it would be a good idea because they aren't interested in actual debate so much as performance and sound-bites to drive advertising revenue - to quote Sartre's point that increasingly applies in so many situations these days:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

From my new-and-limited understanding, it can potentially be an issue if similarly- or identically-named instances are on different servers - someone over on Lemmy noted that the mod of lgbt is also the mod of conservative. If you don't know a post is from X@kbin or X@lemmy that could be a source of confusion depending on the quality of the different source-communities.

In the grand scheme of things, presumably whichever one is the more user-friendly will get the audience share and the other would wither away to the footnotes of history, but it's still a potential issue in the meantime. Happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken on all this, still very much a beginner here.

People will come, it's just a matter of time and having the patience to cultivate organic communities rather than trying to simply will them into existence all at once a la GooglePlus (or whatever their attempt at a social network was called)

Yes, on par I lean towards it being a good thing as publicly available information rather than shadowy mud-slinging. I had one post downvoted by someone who apparently has done nothing else before or since, which takes a bit of the sting out of it. There will probably be debates about it at some point, and probably the occasional tit-for-tat attacks around the place, but overall I think it does link a bit more identity to the person who does the up- or down-voting which creates more of a community feel instead of hiding behind total anonymity.

Technically Lore didn't do it himself, he summoned the crystalline entity which killed everyone.

I think we tend to overestimate how solid things are, even in the digital world. The concept of "bit-rot", for instance, shows how online links degrade over time as sites move or, say, a major website preparing for an IPO enrages its users who then delete or edit all their comments in protest (lol, like that'd ever happen).

Semi-relevant xkcd

Paul Ekman demonstrated back in the 1960s that, when showing photos of expressions to previously-uncontacted tribes in Papua New Guinea, these people who had no access to other media recognised and could name the feelings described. Also, blind children who have not been told what "a smile" is, will display the facial expression automatically. This research finding was one of the nails in the coffin of the Behaviourist school of psychology (with rats pulling levers) that said everything was learned by rewards/punishments.

Ekman identified 6 "basic" emotions: happy, sad, disgusted, angry, scared, and surprised (which, except for the last one, were the characters in Pixar's "Inside Out"). Later researchers have proposed a seventh emotion of "pride", which has the posture of puffed-out chest and smug half-smile, which again is displayed by blind athletes on winning competitions.

And apparently it is adult-themed and explores millennial angst and disenchantment, because reasons. Yes, really.

I saw a gnome at a grocery store in the forest yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for shoes or anything.
He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen toadstools in his hands without paying.
The maiden at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the toadstools and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each toadstool and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.

I'd say the more incredible part is how Twitter is still going, and how people are still actively there, in spite of the rolling dumpster fire that's been happening for literally months now.

I wonder how much of this stems from that announcement a few weeks back that Wagner was going to be subordinated to the MoD? I haven't heard anything about it since it was announced (since my main source of information was that front page of the internet which just descended into its own civil war...) From vague recollection, Prigozhin said he was refusing to sign any contracts formalising such arrangements but Putin was backing the defence minister Shoigu on this one, to presumably try and rein in Wagner a bit and keep the game of musical chairs going as Putin's underlings all vied for influence without anyone being the clear heir apparent.

Looks like it may have backfired spectacularly if so, because Prigozhin had to have known it would have meant his end if he'd accepted Shoigu's control, and, as Sun-Tzu warns, a cornered animal (or army) with no way out will fight to the death.

My obscure nostalgia moment from the N64 was the game Blast Corps, where you had to destroy buildings with a range of vehicles to clear a path for a nuclear missile on a truck. Getting the side-swiper to skid just right was so satisfying.

And of course Banjo-Kazooie, as much for the immersive soundtrack as the colourful worlds.

Ironically, "thou" was actually the informal pronoun vs. the more formal "you".

Helpful tip: if, hypothetically, you come across a prolific poster who seems to only thrive on bitter negativity, you can go to their profile and click the "block" option next to the "follow" one near the top of the page and they'll never turn up in your browsing again. Good for peace of mind.

Do not underestimate the power of the dark side of the pours.

Absolutely, power has been agglomerating in larger and more consolidated bodies over the past few decades in the western world (notably right-wing parties fuelled by rage and the tech behemoths fuelled by cash), so it's a question of whether there'll be grass-roots energy pushing back to claim more power for people or whether it will end in a more forceful consolidation of power, either by oligarchy or would-be king (though the latter seems unlikely, as there's no one both charismatic enough and driven enough to claim the crown, but who knows).

Fingers crossed that the end result brings us a better world.