He could also just be an attention-seeker claiming he’s the shooter. No shortage of those, instant popularity without doing much. In which case he might dispute certain details, but still claim overall credit.

He could have even faked the whole thing by intentionally carrying a 3d gun, then acting extremely suspicious in mcdonalds, getting the cops called and claiming to them that he’s the shooter. Altoona then forwarded that to the NYPD and they said “sure why not, this is the best tip we’ve gotten so far, let’s run with it.”

No one can mark an account as a bot one except you, so maybe its an app that keeps setting it.

All I can say is that in practice, bots can’t answer most simple questions in a believable way, especially questions that require actual personal opinions, or that require any context outside of what they were asked.

The most we’ve seen is that people created seemingly lemmy-specific signup bots, but they always answer questions in the same transparent way.

The blogspam bots that have gotten through (not for many months now here on lemmy.ml) are all transparent, because they all post links to the same domain. All it takes is one report, and we can remove their entire history.

It doesn’t, that’s up to the server / community to empower their own mods. Both ban and remove are reversible actions also.

The music.

Brenda lee, nat king cole, sinatra, harry belafonte, all made some incredible xmas albums. I play piano, and there are so many great jazz christmas books too.

Making gingerbread houses is so much fun… we’re still at the level of just copying from gingerbread house youtubers, but its a fun day putting on xmas music and making them.

There are two groups here, bots, and bad actors. We’ve found that these measures have mostly stopped them both.

Bots

• Registration applications. Its been extremely easy to differentiate bots from real people by asking a series of simple questions, and only let the real people in.
• Reports: so that mods / admins can see them quickly.
• Blocking open-signup servers that don’t have required applications, that usually serve as spam-attacks against the whole fediverse.

Some bots still get through occasionally, but not many compared to before. And some servers have more “lax” application questions, so they let more through.

Bad actors

• Registration applications. Most of the trolls are of a temperament where they refuse to do the work of answering questions earnestly. They can’t help themselves but give obviously trolling answers, if they do even bother to do that work at all.
• Reports: same as above.
• Ban + remove. Mods and admins can ban and remove all a person’s content at the click of a button. So even if the troll did the work of getting past the front door, then all their work is nullified by an action that takes less than 5 seconds. So they wasted much more of their time, than they did for admins, and accomplished nothing lasting.

Are there any highschool subcultures that are cool now? Speaking from a US perspective:

• Jocks are now finance/crypto bros, or clueless managers.
• Nerds are building bombs or AI or spending their days trying to get people to click on ads.
• Theatre kids are imperialist hamilton libs who think the US is “a nation of immigrants”, and not a settler-state based on indigenous eviction.
• Hippies are pacifist color-revolution-supporters.
• Goths are probably eco-nihilists.
• My experience with modern day punks, skaters, and stoners is that they’re mostly some kind of libertarian who believe in a lot of reactionary conspiracy theories.
• Hipsters are almost always some flavor of western-chauvinist / white supremacist.

Issue for context: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/687

deleted by creator

The USSR never had a single year of peace, in its entire existence. Following the revolution was a brutal civil war in which 14+ nations (including the US) landed troops to try to stop the republic. Even after the reds won against the whites, they had years of intrigues against them, then rising fascism, which a lot of historians see as a continuous conflict in eastern europe from the years between the twe world wars.

Stalin presciently stated that “we have 10 years to industrialize in the time it took capitalist nations 50+ years, or we’re toast”. Then you have operation barbarossa and the nazi onslaught, with its scorched earth policy and genocidal onslaught of the USSR, the eastern front of ww2 being the bloodiest conflict in history, with the soviets saving the world from fascism.

Then you have the US atom bombing civilians as a warning to the soviets, and 60 years of a cold war arms race, and too many other threats and incursions to count.

The USSR wouldn’t have lasted a single year if they disarmed and followed that advice, and europe would probably be all speaking german now if it weren’t for Stalin.

I don’t read them, but its how yelp sorts and highlights things.

Looks like I’ll have to give happycow another chance.

We all need tony.

Vegan btw, and happy cow is probably the most buggy app on my phone. I’d like it to be good, but you can barely search within a map area.

Paul Cockshott - Obstacles to the China path in Latin America.

The strategy that just keeps working better and better as time goes on.

Critical thinking is too difficult, so its best to let zionist bloggers tell you what’s factual. /s

The US can’t even prevent leftists getting elected in their own hemisphere anymore. The ME and north Africa are the only places its still having successes.