Having a pet lizard has made me have a hard time taking the “lizard people/reptilians” conspiracy theorists seriously. Like, have these people actually been around reptiles? Deeply unserious creatures. Not generally social, sure, but they definitely have body language and would fail terribly at running some kind of complex scheme.

I mean, not really? There’s lots of reasons to use aliens in a story and I’m struggling to think of one that only works if you assume low-diversity planets

It can be relatively justified for NMS too, considering that its setting seems to explicitly be some sort of simulation in-universe, the rules it operates on don’t have to match physical reality

If your species showed affection by rubbing against others and you trusted the creature not to step on you, and you were trying to act all sweet to beg for food tho…

I don’t most years, unless a friend really wants to do something with me for it in which case I might go along for their benefit. Not really a holiday person in general though.

Wasnt “messengers sent by one country being attacked by rival they were sent to” a source of a number of historical conflicts? I seem to recall the mongols destroying some empire in revenge over that, at the very least.

To be fair, any currently living but older relatives will have had the ability to access high speed internet for just as long as you, but also time with older forms of media as well.

Not literally nazis in the “claim the ww2 german nazi party as indicative of their personal identity” sense, but in the way that “Nazi” gets used in modern english as a synonym for “fascist”. And arguably that user has a point; trying to build a state based on a favored identity at the expense of another group who lives on that land, re-framing marginalization and conflict with that group as self defense, is one of the hallmarks of fascism. If it were just “national liberation”, then who would they be seeking liberation from? Israel isnt under foreign occupation or some kind of vassalage, the closest thing to that you could even argue for is that they have some dependence on the US for military support, and beyond that relationship not being at the level of the US controlling Israel, the US isnt who zionists are usually fighting against anyway. If this were still the era of the roman empire or something, that kind of line might make some sense, but under the current state of affairs, it does not.

Lemons contain water. I’d assume, being fruit, they probably contain at least some sugar? Thus, if you were willing to tolerate a lot of waste and the effort of extracting those ingredients, and had enough spare lemons, maybe you could make lemonade out of just lemons?

In a pure debate sense, this would be true, even an unpopular or suspicious person is still capable of making a valid point. It should be considered, however, that internet arguments are not formal debates. They can at times use the form and language of them, but most people are not skilled in that kind of formalized arguing, and most people are not arguing in an actual attempt to use the debate to identify stronger vs inconsistent positions (rather than just trying to push people towards ones own ideas or to put down ideas one finds reprehensible).

Now, I dont personally tend to find much point in looking through profiles, it takes too much time for little benefit in my view, but it can sometimes tell you if an account is not worth the time and emotional investment to interact with, or if it has signs that it might not be. The nature of social media is such that there are always far more user’s trying to get your attention, than you have attention to spare. As such, if theres even a notable red-flag that an account isnt worth the time and potential frustration to engage with, it can make pragmatic sense to move on (depending on how much one is willing to put up with, I guess).

From that perspective, telling other people what it was that seemed like a red flag to you lets them consider if that thing makes that account worth their time or not, without them having to find it too, and therefore potentially does those other people a favor. That sounds a bit harsh (at least to me) because plenty of things others might consider suspect, like a new account, cant always be helped (everyone starts off new after all), and being ignored, or having other people call out that thing as a reason they might want to ignore you, is frustrating, but that’s just the nature of giving massive numbers of people the ability to talk to everyone else; most people wont want or have the time to listen to you, and you’re not entitled to their time, however unfair their reason for dismissing you might be.

I would assume that, since humans sometimes pretend to not be human, that would simply be a subset of human behavior, and so what would make the comment make the most sense wouldn’t be “looking for behavior atypical for humans”, but rather " looking for behavior that humans arent able to engage in no matter how hard they try". What that would even be in a text based system though, I’m not sure. Typing impossibly fast maybe?

Id imagine its Trump himself they think theyre fooling there. Its a gesture that feeds his ego, in the hopes of getting favorable treatment later.

That might mean something if there were any realistic chance that this would result in something better and more democratic, but both given how Trump acts and how US intervention in Central and South America typically goes, odds are that whoever they find will just be a puppet dictator out to extract resources to the benefit of US companies.

This is the real reason all those rich AI company CEOs are building a ton of data centers to make your water more expensive: they know they’ll turn to dust like a marvel movie character if enough water passes between your lips.

Isn’t this basically just how a recumbent bicycle (or quadracyle I guess) works?

A hot air balloon is kind of on fire, at least when the burner is running

Shouldn’t Spanish have the same problem? I’ve seen them abbreviate it to EEUU though, which I assume must help prevent confusion?

On the other hand, drawing pockets somewhere because you just realized that the way you drew the arm means the hands wont reach the pants, and you really don’t feel like trying to draw a hand, is something a human might do.

It’s sometimes surprising to learn how many of the plants around are edible. Like so often I’ll see some common wild plant, wonder what it is, look it up, and discover that some random bit of it is technically edible even though I’d never heard of anyone eating it before.

I once confused my mother by calling a snow leopard at a zoo a snep forgetting that was internet lingo