not a problem. Overly Sarcastic Productions has a wonderful series on YouTube for those looking to get into Machiavelli, and other stoic philosophers.

The short version is that Machiavelli is a rather profound Stoic philosopher, but everyone misses that in a lot of his work he is being slightly sarcastic to throw the “powers that be” off the scent that he was criticizing them. When you hear how he suggests that “Princes should be feared rather than respected.” he actually calling out the despots of his day. It’s kind of how Stephen Colbert portrayed a right wing pundit on “The Colbert Report” as a way of satirizing right-wing pundits.

the “Cranking a box to get the Birdie” was a clever one.

Meanwhile there’s an entire CATALOGUE of Humor from having watched PBS as a kid that the world is now only just waking up too. “Red Green”, “Red Dwarf”, “Black Adder”, “Are you being served?”, “Allo, Allo!”, “Faulty Towers,” “Monty Python.” that shit was a reference GOLDMINE.

“That’s Cute.” -Machiavelli

That logo looks like an ass crack.

I think I figured out the mentality. It’s Barbie dolls. They all still subconsciously want to look like a barbie doll. and this is some DEEP subconscious conditioning too. (Exception for folks with alopecia, of course)

TBF, the structural differences if the protestant faith and the catholic faith were viable at the start. The catholics had a reformation and because they actually looked at the protestant doctrines and were like “yeah, ya’know, fair” to a lot of them. Meanwhile, Protestantism got popular with the the elites because they misinterpreted Martin Luther’s philosophy to basically say that just paying lip service to God can still get you into heaven and so they could save a bundle on tithes and treat faith a performance art. Which is how you got assholes like the Calvinists.

In case you were thinking I was feeding into the thesis of the thread, neither of them are wholly correct, which is true of most religions, but if you look at the them purely objectively, Catholicism is “more correct” than Protestantism, as Catholics at least expect their practitioners to perform “good works” in their communities as a requirement rather than a strong suggestion.

Users. While niche communities are good, the real numbers need to come for the regulars at r/movies, /r/politics, r/news, and r/funny. If you can get an entire fandom to quit and switch to lemmy that would be an absolute death knell for Reddit.

Bold move in a nation that treats firearms target practice as a sport.

Right. Because what people are just clamoring for is MORE draconian over sight on their public video platform.🙄

Real talk: I heard somewhere that this is Jack Black’s Mom.

I feel like this need a spokesperson. Is John oliver available? No need to pay him; He’ll do this shit FOR FREE.

Case in point: I absolutely LOVE The Lord of the Rings films. Absolute masterpieces that haven’t aged A DAY.

Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” had me asleep in 25 pages.

Remember when YouTube started having AI narrated posts from r/askreddit in its shorts? And how that slowly morphed into the AI generated slop stories about how one family member give the rest of them their comeuppance because the Henderson account valued results instead of random cheap business practices involving Sgt Menendez and his cheating ex girlfriend?

(This stuff is like candy to Boomers because it mirrors the reader write in sections of Reader’s Digest.)

I should have noticed this earlier, but it dawned on me a few weeks back.

I got banned from reddit, and it took me 2 weeks to think to search up “reddit like alternatives.” This is not a problem with disenchantment with Reddit, this a problem with Fediverse visibility.