I’ll go first: r/kitty. One of the hundred grillion cat subs back on Reddit, the culture in this one was you posted a cat picture, and the only word allowed in the title or in any comments or replies was “Kitty.”

Someone is using that subreddit for covert communications, I just know it. Either on the level of “if u/PM_me_your_nostrils posts an orange cat, we attack at dawn!” or there’s some steganography going on with the pictures, but that subreddit was too stupid to be as active as it was.

  • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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    27 minutes ago

    I don’t think this is too far out there but I haven’t seen it around much. Epstein was a honeypot.

    He got an absolutely disgusting sweetheart deal for his initial conviction resulting in him being released for 12 hours a day for work and a 13 month sentence. Now the attorney that cut that deal (illegally, mind you) was Alex Acosta. He was nominated for secretary of labor in 2017 and faced scrutiny for that deal, to which he said he was told epstein “belonged to intelligence” and to “leave it alone.”

    Supporting circumstamtial evidence includes ghislaine maxwells father having known connections to MI6, mossad, and the KGB, though he died in 1991 so that doesn’t necessarily imply much. Additionally, the FBI has HARD FUCKING EVIDENCE including tapes which doubt less contain CSAM, yet nobody has actually been arrested as a result.

    The issue is that this relies on taking Acosta at his word, and he’s kind of a huge piece of shit. It could be possible that he was buddies with epstein and gave him a deal and covered up the evidence because he was involved too, and presumably enough powerful people in government were involved to keep everything quiet.

    Sounds crazy when spelled out, but it’s hard to imagine why else nothing would come of the mountains of evidence that probably followed the raids, or why epstein wasn’t closely watched after his initial conviction.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    The fashion world is in a war on pockets, so they can sell more handbags. The fewer and smaller pockets we have, the more accessories we need to buy. First they came for women’s pockets. Now they’re trying to make cargo shorts unacceptable for the same reason.

  • Match!!@pawb.social
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    3 hours ago

    content warnng: Magic The Gathering

    facts: a couple of weeks ago the commander rules committee, the independent group that governs the popular Commander format, started receiving death threats after they banned some boring ass broken cards (jeweled lotus? dockside extortionist? nobody is ride or die for those)

    as a result, the rules committee turned over control of the format to Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro, the makers of magic the gathering

    fact: last year after some magic the gathering content was leaked, Hasbro send literal pinkertons to harasss the youtuber leaking it and recover the leaked goods

    conspiracy theory: hasbro hired the pinkertons to make those death threats against the rules committee so that hasbro could seize control ove the most popular independent format of magic

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      43 minutes ago

      I wanna say “nub uh” but the fact that they’re getting death threats is really crazy. Like they changed the mulligan rule from partial Paris to the new one (Vancouver?) and basically everyone said “that’s neat” and did partial Paris anyway. And over busted things like dockside? Goddamn there was barely an outcry over prophet of kruphix.

      Sol ring ban I could see death threats. That’s about it.

  • lazylion_ca@lemmy.ca
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    2 hours ago

    r/cat was like that for a while. Imagine being the database admin being responsible for a billion iterations of the word cat.

  • Adderbox76@lemmy.ca
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    5 hours ago

    JD Vance was forced in as the Trump VP pick by the Heritage Foundation so that when Trump either dies or stops cooperating with them on Project 2025, they already have a man in place to take over. And that’s likely the reason for the assassination attempts.

    If Trump dies, they get Vance (a true believer…unlike Trump who just wants the power to stay out of prison) at the top of the ticket.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      1 minute ago

      If Trump dies, they get Vance (a true believer…unlike Trump who just wants the power to stay out of prison) at the top of the ticket.

      And we get some kind of Peter Theil libertarian theocracy.

      Vance’s flexibility to bend in any direction at any time is just… he makes lindsey graham look principled.

  • Sho@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    That all of Tom Cruise’s movies ( and by extension any media created by ppl of the church) are propaganda for the church of scientology.

  • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Insurance companies randomly deny claims just to see if you’ll fight it. If you don’t, they’ll know they can deny more if your claims in the future. This is illegal, but if it’s a “bug” in the software or “AI” than they get away with it. Actually it’s harder with AI since people are more skeptical and have already caught them doing it. However this may be due to the AI being trained on the intentionally buggy software.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      They actually do use software to find deniable claims that would theoretically have to be reviewed by a doctor. The doctor pulls up a while page of to be denied claims and theoretically gives them the legally required review all at once in the 30 seconds before he hits the button. There is no reason NOT to feed propensity to accept fake denial into the equation. You could even white wash it by presuming that prior denials that stuck were indication of bad claims and assert you are measuring their proclivity for filing wasteful claims.

  • SwearingRobin@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    When windows has updated and needs to restart it purposefully gets a bit slower/buggy to make people restart the PC.

    • hactar42@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      I completely believe this. If I let my Surface Pro go too long the facial recognition will stop working and the little white light at the top will not turn off. The only fix is to reboot and let it finish updating.

  • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    Conspiracy Theorist culture has been coopted by the evangelical right in the wake of shit like Watergate and Iran-Contra making a non-interfered-with conspiracy theorist culture seem too dangerous to the right to be allowed to persist.

    Evidence being that if you go far enough down the rabbit holes of the looney theories we all like to make fun of, you’ll inevitably find some evangelical nut preaching about how it has to be that way either because they believe it says so in the bible or because they believe it’s a sign of the rapture which is surely happening within their lifetime, or often both.

    It’s like the most dangerous kind of conservative appropriation of counterculture narrative.

  • Elextra@literature.cafe
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    7 hours ago

    The addition of microphones and cameras to things like phones, computers, watches and other technology is to normalize being surveiled as well as minimize other privacy violations. We now have fridges that have WiFi capabilities now and often in the presence of some sort of device with a camera due to phones.

    • DempstersBox@lemmy.world
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      37 minutes ago

      What’s really crazy is how fucking Good all those microphones are.

      I’ve been using alfredcam to utilize old phones and tablets, and holy shit they can hear so well.

      Like the k88, an ancient tablet that was useless when it came out, foisted upon at&t users. The mic on it will pick up conversations clear as a bell OUTSIDE my house

      Shit’s fucked, yo

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Fridges with computers in them but we someone missed the boat on pervasive RFID in food containers and maintaining in stock of my shit. It should be able to tell my milk is 1/4 full and 2 days from expiration and add it to an order that shows up when my calendar says I’ll be home but no what do we get? Something with 1/2 the lifespan which can play youtube videos and show you how much beer you have from the couch from its webcam.

      Why even bother.

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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      4 hours ago

      Pretty sure they said conspiracy theory, not fact. At this point it’s so believable if a theory it might as well be fact, in my opinion.

      • Elextra@literature.cafe
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        3 hours ago

        Well I guess for me is wondering if this trend started because people thought it would be either functional or cool vs businesses being malicious and their aim was more surveillance tolerance?

        People dont think its weird to have a camera on a laptop or phone anymore. Instead, people sometimes are now buying phones for the picture quality… And fridges with WiFi because the tech is cool or something.

  • JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 hours ago

    Ken Paxton has dirt on every Republican in Texas, and the fraud we know about is probably a multitude less than what he actually does.

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    Soda bottle caps for newer types of soda fit worse onto the bottles. They’re harder to re-thread on, for example, the new Oreo Coke than they are on the old Diet Coke.

    The reason that newer bottle designs are harder to thread is that they’re trying to make people drop the cap, leading to just giving up on re-capping.

    This is to reinforce the narrative that people lose their bottle caps.

    Which is to lend support for the drive to make caps attached to a little ring on the bottle, like in Europe.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        1 hour ago
        • It treats adults as children
        • It gets in the way
        • It’s a reduction of individual freedom, and complementarily, an expansion of government power
  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    7 hours ago

    Republicans knew a lot about Benghazi because Israel orchestrated the attack and hoped Republicans could use it as an attack against Obama.

        • ivanafterall@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          It would certainly raise questions, if true, but my issues are with the baseball shooting specifically. The details, the timelines, the developments and changes as time went on, etc.

  • ⚛️ Color 🎨@lemm.ee
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    8 hours ago

    Washing machines double as portals to another dimension which is populated by sock loving aliens who want to save the cost of manufacturing their own socks. When socks go missing in the washing machine, the aliens end up getting free and clean ones. The next time you see someone who claims to make washing machines, check if they have an otherworldly affinity for socks.

    • tektite@slrpnk.net
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      1 hour ago

      RESIST ALIEN SOCK THEFT! Use a mesh bag to keep all your socks together in the washer. Human sock retention is everyone’s responsibility!