what is that letter? the one you’re using instead of “th”? where does that come from?

sure, but if the us doesn’t china will.

no they actually do explicitly say that in the show.

it’s in drum island. it’s roughly what the old doctor told chopper it meant and then luffy agreed.

it doesn’t say that at all.

it said that good drivers SOMETIMES miss their exits.

it did not say ALL good drivers miss their exits. it did not even say that ALL good drivers sometimes miss their exits. it said that there are times where good drivers miss their exit. there’s no imperative.

even if you want to be the most pedantic person on this autism boat of a website; in this case you’re just plane wrong.

ugh, the eagles argument is so old and played out. there’s a million reasons why the eagles couldn’t have carried them in.

for one thing, mordor had an airforce. the nazgul were stronger than or equal to the strength of the eagles. the only reason they could fly in at the end is because the ring was already destroyed and the nazgul fell with it.

another is that the plan only worked because it was done in secret. if they had flown in, sauron would have seen them days or weeks before they arrived. he would have had that entire army waiting for them on mount doom. even if the eagles made it past the nazgul they never could have made it into the mountain.

the eagles are intelligent willfull creatures. they also didn’t want to risk active war with mordor. just like this meme is pointing out, no one would have helped if they didn’t absolutely have to. that’s made much more clear in the books. every race and nation believes that either they are too far for the danger to reach them or that they can appease sauron. the eagles were not fully committed to war with mordor. they were kind of like Europe helping ukraine right now. they had a side, they supported that side, but only with the occasional assist never an actual battle.

also, the ring’s corruption will basically slowly turn all who bear it for long enough into ring wraiths. that’s why frodo and bilbo had to take the boat to basically heaven at the end. they were immortal, but the magic that gave them that life was gone from the world. they would have withered away into husks over time, but not died. while the movies didn’t show it, Sam also suffered this fate in the end. he got to live his life with his family, but he too eventuality needed to make his exit in that manner. the only reason Hobbits could bear the ring is because they so free from want of power that it simply doesn’t sway their hearts the same way. if the eagles had carried the ring bearer for the length of journey that would have been required they too would have been corrupted. that was why they dissolved the fellowship. because the ring was starting to corrupt other party members despite only frodo carrying it.

so no, the eagles couldn’t have just carried them.

sure, but they also don’t call eating an apple “eating trees”. it would still be fair to call applewood based products “beaver food” or “cardboard” if someone told you to eat it.

hmm, there’s gotta be some agreement or contract that makes them.

no business is going to willingly get in the way of their own profits like that. no companies id for alcohol because they’re concerned for your health lol. if there isn’t a law or legal incentive for them to do that then they have credible evidence that there will be if they don’t.

you can’t survive as a business in 2025 if you willingly do things that could show down sales for something silly like “health and safety”

ignores Ukraine

welcome to Lemmy.ml

anyone have more detail on why China said they blocked them.

i know they’re blocked in China for not agreeing to Chinese censorship, but Is that the reason China gave? something like “refusing to correct libelous slander against our great and wise party” or have they spun up some other bullshit his time?

obviously the wikimedia foundation isn’t going to call them out like that in a post like this. they ultimately still want to do what little they can to appease China.

yeah, they are the lower level atronach. you basically blew past them.

if you go to the atronach forge at frostcrag spire you can still spawn one with some fire salts.

makes me think,

for thousands of years all of our cooked meats would have been roasted over open wood fires. they’d be smoky delicious barbeque. I’m sure some ancient people were even covering it in making it intentionally smoky.

do you think the first stoves got pushback from people that liked the smoke? i mean it must have been weird the first time they tasted things that weren’t smoky… then again, I’m sure there was plenty of stuff that just didn’t get that smoky on the open fire. and the convenience of not needing to go outside was absolutely worth it. and we eventually figured out that some things are quite a lot better without smoke…

i suppose all of this is why we still have grills and smokers today, even though most people also have a stove. people really like that taste. so yeah, i guess everything was bbq before a more convenient option became avaliable. we all know how much people love convenience. I’m sure that was just as true 1000 years ago as it is today.

only one of these could be called a hero.

leon is at BEST a very dark shade of morally gray as a former child soldier who was raised to be a hitman by the mob.

and the dude is just the dude. he just wanted his damn rug back.

some additional relevant statistics

united states barely saw 1% growth year over year and are projecting that growth to continue to slow.

India has nearly 3x the users of the United States. the u.s. is still second because it’s the country it started in, but it’s not far ahead of the 3rd and 4th place countries. India is an extreme outlier.

unfortunately they don’t break down the age demographic by region, but I’d bet that if we specifically look at daily active users in the United States the age demo would skew much older.

so, it seems like it’s similar to what many fast food restaurants have been experiencing lately. the growth opportunities in the United States dried up so the decided to push like hell everywhere else. i bet the growth they saw in India over the last decade was explosive. probably bigger than anything they had ever seen before. bigger than when it was still growing in the u.s… meanwhile they project that over the next decade in the u.s. they’ll see maybe 8% user growth and that’s pretty optimistic.

so we probably won’t actually see much Facebook marketing in the u.s… the only way they can capture more u.s users is by buying more apps, like when they bought Instagram.

this does seem to imply that the part of the world where Facebook has become a fact of life is very specifically India. I’m sorry to hear that for them.

i primarily use lemmy these days, but still have to use a few other things.

I still browse reddit for this like episode discussion threads for amine and other tv. lemmy will have maybe 5 responses in the threads for the 3 biggest shows of a season. it’s just not there yet.

I’m also a videographer, in our modern age that means i NEED to be on Instagram, YouTube, and tiktok because those are the platforms everyone wants me to make things for. can’t know how to make things for a platform I don’t use, sadly. especially since “just make something good” doesn’t work on any of them. in fact making something that looks good is often more of a hinderence these days and it kills me.

i hate short form video. i hate every mainstream social media platform. i just want to make pretty videos and not have to deal with tiktok trends. I learned 10 ways to attach a lav mic secure and tidy in school. I must now hold the lav mic in my fingers because that’s what’s trendy and following the trends is the ONE thing that DEFINITELY works.

I hate what has come of my profession. at this point I’m just ready for the ai to take my job so i can blow my head off in peace.

it’s it’s gotta be something very difficult that no one has ever fund before.

that’s basically the approach that all of popular culture had been taking since like 2008. like that was the attitude of the last 20 years. show these bigots that if they at least pretend to play nice we can all get along and be more prosperous for it.

they hated it. it’s the “woke mind virus” to them now. I genuinely don’t believe people like this will ever be ok in a kind and accepting world. I also don’t think that trying to get rid of them will solve this problem… i don’t know if there is a solution to some people being mentally incapable of empathy, but it certainly doesn’t help that it’s so baked into our culture now.

capitalism is highly compatible with a lack of empathy. it’s a system that inherently promotes those with no scruples. the less you feel bad about being a piece of shit for money, the more money you’ll be able to make. it’s a predatory system where those most willing and able to cannibalize everyone and everything around them for personal gain will gain the most. those that gain the most are then also in a position to manipulate both political votes and public opinion. they blatantly bribe our politicians and they own our media platforms. this is especially problematic on social media. if you were a young American on tiktok in the last u.s. election you probably saw numerous vague tiktoks about kamala starting WWIII. no quotes, no context, just “me and the boys after kamala starts wwiii” type shit. as I understand it nearly every major election around the world since then has seen tiktok flooded with “memes” like that supporting the right wing candidate. we’re certainly not going to make any progress on this issue while that’s the world we live in.

maybe a stable enough government with keen enough regulations can at least try to keep these people from completely raiding the hen house. we’ll have to see how things play out with Germany and the afd ban, but I’m not too hopeful on that playing out well in our current situation.

IDK, I’m half convinced that humanity is eternally doomed to repeat the same mistakes. with long periods of everything sucking because too few have or want too great a percentage of what humanity has claimed their own and the occasional period where things are accidentally not that bad.

we are currently leaving one of those brief periods of “not that bad”

it’s tough to know what you’re seeing without seeing it. can you post a side by side showing one image at 160 and another at a bigger iso where you aren’t noticing this effect?

the only reason to write that book would be for when i would inevitably get to post the “don’t create the torment nexus” meme for tons of social media impressions.

though knowing what impressions are pegs me as a creative who won’t get to post on social media from the mines.

the robots won’t be equipped to fix it. there will be no one left to tell they got it wrong.

same reason harlan ellison wrote i have no mouth and i must scream i suppose…