The thing that really got her attention was me pointing out I can’t make a gallon of gas by myself, buy I can make a kilowatt of electricity with stuff I have lying around my house/yard.

Yeah, the Technology Connections video on solar panels vs ethanol production (growing corn to turn into ethanol to add to gasoline) was honestly a great tool for convincing people who simply never bothered to think critically about it. I don’t even need to get them to watch the video, I simply paraphrase some of the arguments he makes.

Kind of a “I’m going to shoot you in the head but I feel bad about it” sort of thing.

Not sure if you were making a reference, but one of Israel’s most distinctive propaganda tactics is literally called Shooting And Crying. Basically, get your former IDF soldiers to act all sad about the atrocities they had to commit, so the public focus stays on sympathy instead of the war crimes and genocides they committed. Nobody feels good about kicking a crying person while they’re down, so it’s a way to shunt blame and avoid being held accountable for your own actions.

Basically, divert the blame onto the shadowy and faceless “they”. They ordered me to do bad things. They put me in situations where I was forced to make impossible choices. They forced me to struggle to survive. They are the reason I had to do all of those awful things. Because “they” is a faceless amorphous entity that can’t be held accountable and can’t defend itself against allegations. Meaning “they” is easy to shift blame onto as long as I remain a sympathetic victim in the public’s mind. If I keep crying, I never actually have to apologize for my war crimes, because they should be the ones apologizing instead.

Came to the comments specifically to see if anyone else noticed it. Glad to see it wasn’t just me.

I’d even be okay with platforms like Youtube receiving a portion of that fine for having to be in the middle of the bullshit copyright claims that were overturned because

YouTube is legally obligated to take the content down as soon as they receive the DMCA notice or else YouTube will become liable for potential damages. YouTube’s automated copyright claim system is inherently broken, but that’s a symptom of DMCA, not the cause.

It’s because it breaks all the nice extra functionality of iMessage. iMessage is closer to Discord chats; You can do things like react to messages, send live emojis, spoiler/emphasize text, edit/delete sent messages, see when someone is typing, see read receipts, automatically send check-ins when you arrive at a destination, draw doodles, send full quality media, share galleries natively, etc… But as soon as someone with an android joins the group chat, all of that goes out the window and you’re stuck with boring old SMS.

Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified, because they’re left with a noticeably reduced feature set as soon as someone forces them to use green bubbles.