Yes, for the general population. Otherwise, companies will stop the psychological pricing. Same with corporate snooping to see our shopping and grocery habits and then send us with targeted ads.

It never works on me. I was taught at a very early age that pricing down by one cent of one dollar is a psychological trick and that I should round up to the nearest whole number.

For example, I definitely see the decrease in frequency, or not at all, on Reddit philosophy getting into frontpage despite having millions of subscribers. Many posts from r/philosophy often would gain thousands of up votes landing them into the front page. However, since Reddit’s crack down on bot activities, I see r/philosophy posts getting only a fraction of the number of up votes they used to get, which makes almost none of the posts go into the front page. It is clear evidence that bots manipulate the votes.

I don’t know about you, but others also noticed completely innocuous and benign comments just getting a downvote. Before I would chalk it up to people just down voting for no reason or to downvote others to propel their own content at the expense of others; but after what transpired with Reddit’s crackdown on bot activities and user participation just so happened to decreased significantly? One would have to admit or acknowledge there is deliberate manipulation on what contents get to be seen or promoted long before and even as we speak.

I know some people down vote and don’t discuss, but it’s very strange in a political discussion when you don’t get a pushback but getting so many downvotes.

My dude, there are plenty of actual automated bots on Reddit. IIRC when Reddit cracked down hard on bot accounts recently, over half of users and participation in many subreddits also decreased. That alone says that there is artificial engagement on Reddit rather than genuine human interaction (which vindicates the dead Internet theory). It explains a lot as to why a very innocent and neutral comment somehow gets a downvote: they are just bots downvoting.

Even here in Lemmy, there are downvotes on the same benign comments and no explanation as to why someone would disagree. But even if the comment is political in nature, there are downvotes but no feedback as to why one would disagree. There is a post on c/climate on European Greens calling for Jill Stein not to run for US presidential elections because she would just siphon the votes from liberals and progressives even though she will not win. And many comments on that post are getting half or a third of downvotes, but there are no accompanying disagreeing comments to explain the disagreement. It is clear that there are bots in that post who are trying to downplay the repercussions of Stein running to US elections and democracy.

Winston Churchill’s government did not hold an election during six years of World War 2, but we didn’t see any shred of crocodile tears about it.

Being a huge nerd on certain topics tend to ruin the fun of watching movies.

That’s why I am not buying new ones until I finish the others.

Edit: also, I do take the high seas. But only games coming from greedy devs who don’t deserve my money.

To be fair, the egregious provisions of the PATRIOT act which allows unilateral spying by the US government has not been renewed. But on the one hand, there have been cases of law enforcement agencies buying information from data brokers, which companies have sold to. The Chinese government different, they can straight up spy on you and question you at any time.

This thing isn’t something that would personally affect me because here in Europe we have GDPR and the EU is consumer-friendly, but privacy is still I would be concerned of for other parts of the world.

Everything you said is literally the other way around.

That has not ever happened (to my knowledge).

One is a totalitarian state who could unleash all its might on you if they wish; the other is still subject to rules and regulations despite being corrupt. I’d rather have Ford and GM spying on my information for corporate interest than a state who wants to micromanage every aspect of your life, thank you very much.

In the American sensibilities, the Democrats are left wing.

I know we’ve shat on Americans too many times that Democrats are not leftists and Republicans are far-right, but there is a place and time for doing so and I learned to cut Americans some slack. Americans simply have different Overton window because of different history and culture (I have explained before as to why, but I cannot be bothered to write another wall of text about it). Other countries don’t even follow a left and right political dichotomy. Many places, especially in developing countries, vote on personalities than policies. But few of us crap on people from developing countries for not following policy-based discourse, or not following the European-originated sensibilities of “left or right” politics.

Bought games from years ago I have to finish. Waste of money if I don’t complete them but I keep buying new ones.

I’m nearly finishing up The Witcher 2. Judging from the discussions, I’m afraid of starting Witcher 3 because I have other backlog of games I have to finish as soon as possible.

The wunderwaffe was a last ditch propaganda attempt to boost morale of the Germans. Which kind of worked because many Germans still believed in the “final victory” with wunderwaffes along the way to save them, in spite of the Allies being at the gates of Berlin.

Biden be like: “Come here, anything for you haBiBi”

Biden is a simp to Netanyahu.

It has always been about power.

Do you not put just a little oil to make them unstick with each other?

And how many black Americans are calling to secede? How many black Americans do not call themselves Americans and want to join another country? Are there many of them?

And for the argument sake that there are black Americans who took up arms to secede, by your logic do you believe Russia should intervene in the United States? Should France and UK have intervened on the side of the Confederacy? Should the Republic of Ireland have invaded Northern Ireland despite the Irish Catholics being discriminated? Should the entire Cyprus be invaded by the Turks after already invading the northern part?

Let me educate you on international law and geopolitics because it is illegal to invade another country unless there is sufficient evidence of wanton violation of basic human rights. That’s why the United Nation General Assembly voted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal and hardly any-- even China-- is fully on-board with the Russian invasion. There is no evidence of limiting the rights of Russian-speakers and there are many of them fighting for Ukraine. Russia is obviously fomenting dissent in Ukraine. Consider that there are Russian-minorities in the NATO-memeber Baltic states; how come only in Georgia and Ukraine-- both are non-NATO members-- somehow have supposed Russian seccesionists? That should give you a hint; or otherwise you’re being a useful idiot.