I’ll go first: r/kitty. One of the hundred grillion cat subs back on Reddit, the culture in this one was you posted a cat picture, and the only word allowed in the title or in any comments or replies was “Kitty.”

Someone is using that subreddit for covert communications, I just know it. Either on the level of “if u/PM_me_your_nostrils posts an orange cat, we attack at dawn!” or there’s some steganography going on with the pictures, but that subreddit was too stupid to be as active as it was.

  • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
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    My city has a local company that rents storage units and they have entirely too many locations relative to the population of our city such that I believe they’re a criminal enterprise. I believe they construct so many new buildings for money laundering purposes and to facilitate human trafficking and drug running out of them.

    Breaking news, I just googled them and one of the owners was convicted in his 20s of trying to sell poached falcons to Saudi Arabian royalty. The plot thickens.

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      We have a computer repair shop in my town that does not do computer repair. Ask them if they can fix something, the answer is always “we don’t do that.” Even simple shit like screen repair on cell phones, which they have signs on their windows saying they do. “We don’t do that.” My landlord owns the local radio station, he says they’ve tried to get them to do computer repair for them. “we don’t do that.” Factory I worked out tried them. “We don’t do that” Friend needed keyboard repaired on laptop. “We don’t do that” I’m so convinced at this point that whenever I meet a local business owner I ask them who they use for any computer repair, and it’s always the same answer as to why they don’t use this one place, that’s a big store, in the only strip mall in town. They only have one dude in the store, who’s constantly got some right wing radio or YouTuber on. There’s no other employees, no reasonable way they’re affording the outrageous rent for such prime real estate. There aren’t many businesses in this town, and almost all of them use someone from the bigger city 35 minutes away

      On top of all of that, there used to be a Mexican grocery store in town (in the same parking lot, in fact) that never actually sold any food, and would always say they were closed if you walked in. They got shut down because they were apparently part of a group that was bringing in undocumented workers. The dude who owns the computer repair place is the cousin of the guy who owned the Mexican grocery store.

      • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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        What always confuses me is why don’t they hire a few people that actually do repair and take the business? It seems like a simple way to keep the locals from getting suspicious.

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          In my Town Where i grew up there was such a store that hired someone to do the actual work. That went well, they hired more people, made money, expanded and stopped doing their illegal enterprise.

      • frankPodmore@slrpnk.net
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        2 months ago

        There used to be a very similar shop near me that was actually just a front for selling cannabis.

      • sudo
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        Its a money laundering operation for sure.

      • Today@lemmy.world
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        I would like to see Tulsa King walk in there with a water bottle and confront that guy.

    • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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      Look around for donkeys.

      Forgers and tricksters often have mixed the falcon meat with donkey meat (cheaper, because easier to catch), at a ratio 1:1, that is, one falcon, one donkey.

  • eldoom@lemmy.ml
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    I think that people being in overly light polluted areas for their entire lives is or at least is a major part of what’s wrong with society these days.

    When you go out at night and look at a sky completely filled with stars it makes you feel a certain way. Full of wonder, small, curious. Conversations always go in the “what if” or “what do you think about” sort of direction. It really puts you in your place in a strangely calm, thoughtful , and healthy way. And the more you can see, the better. If the Milky Way is visible it just puts you in awe.

    People don’t get to experience that very often, if at all, when they live in a populated area.

    I think that is by design.

    If you cannot just go outside and get that huge feeling of idk existential wonder, you’re going to get hard coded into your personal fears and beliefs and all that whatnot. This drives the population apart. Meanwhile, all forms of light pollution measures are either deemed too expensive or just not enforced. At least in my area. And large amounts of the population live somewhat close to an airport. Never really gets dark at night near an airport…

    Anyways that’s my ted talk about how light bulbs are ripping society apart by its very fibers. Next up is how ceilings are a conspiracy to keep the poors underfoot if anyone wants to hear it.

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      Cities tend to be more light polluted, but less racially divided than rural areas, though.

      I think it’s more about exposure. If you’re never exposed to a certain kind of people, some people just won’t trust them.

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        Yeah, people in cities tend to be less conservative and more open minded. The more rural, which means less light pollution, are the opposite. So I don’t think that conspiracy really holds.

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      Take it one step further and that sense of wonder is why I feel the powers that be reacted swiftly to squash psychedelics and shut down all research into them, unless the research benefitted the national security cartel, of course.

      It’s difficult for rulers to maintain capitalist control when you can eat a piece of paper and have the wonders of the universe revealed to you and realize that it’s supposed to be about loving other humans. Makes neverending consumption and 9-5 work seem really lame in comparison.

      • eldoom@lemmy.ml
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        The ceilings one is way simpler.

        When you spend a lot of time in a place with low ceilings it makes you subconsciously feel trapped. After a while of it your actions and behavior will likely start to reflect that and you will probably be less likely to do anything that you can for your future.

        You don’t get that in a place with higher ceilings.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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    Elon Musk is not an idiot. He was hired by other rich people like the Saudis to destroy Twitter, to prevent further incidents of public protest organization like what happened in Egypt and the Occupy movement. The degradation of the platform is intentional, and the amplification of right-wing voices helps to chase left-leaning social activists off of the platform. There is no equivalent platform for in-the-moment organization of protests.

    • Susaga@sh.itjust.works
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      Okay, my conspiracy is that this is a conspiracy by Elon so people think he’s an evil genius instead of the bumbling, idea-stealing moron with an inflated budget that he really is.

      The only reason Bluesky isn’t more active is because it isn’t as active, which is becoming less of an issue by the day. And I STILL see activists gathering on twitter.

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      People who thinks musk, trump, putin etc are stupid are … stupid I guess.

      They usually have mental problems like narcissism or psycopathy and lack all kind of feelings but stupid? No.

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        No, they can be all those things at the same time. Heck, it helps to be all three.

        It was narcissism that made Musk want to buy twitter, but stupidity that made him think it would stop people from mocking him. And he came up with naming it X, so that’s more evidence.

        The only reason the world didn’t realise he was an idiot sooner was because he had enough money to buy the ideas of smarter people.

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          You seriously think it bothers billionaires what you think about them?

          I don’t.

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            I don’t think money has any effect on it. Some billionaires are willing to keep to themselves and roll in their money pit. Some billionaires try to buy the white house and publish a book with their face on it. If they don’t care what people think, they’re wasting a lot of money on something they don’t care about.

    • Drunemeton@lemmy.world
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      Or he was backed by some real dirt bags to keep Twitter afloat so the misinformation can continue unabated. Protesters can be easily found out. Humans trafficked. Etc.

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      If something looks, walks, barks and smells like a dog, chances are, it’s a dog.

      The world is complicated enough as is, no need to make it more complicated.

      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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        The world is complicated enough as is, no need to make it more complicated.

        But my dude, that is what conspiracy theories are for.

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    Some US states that keep enacting highly unpopular anti-trans, anti-woke, sexist, racist legislation are doing it in an effort to get left-aligned people to move away and not consider going there, with the goal of skewing elections in their favor.

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        It might be one of the oldest type of conspiracy, that humans created when societies started to be a thing.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      How is this a conspiracy, the whole red neck stereotype of “We don’t like your kind around here” shows how this has been part of common knowledge for a long time.

      I’m not saying it’s obviously true, I’m saying I thought this was a popular belief.

    • rainynight65@feddit.org
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      It would be more compelling if some US states weren’t also openly and unabashedly engaged in active voter suppression.

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    Also related to reddit, since that’s where I was always inundated with this shit, before moving here: the constant stream of Genshin Impact leaks that come out, that the whole obnoxious subculture is built around, are just released by Mihoyo, intentionally, under the guise of all the anonymous leakers that constantly come and go. Seems to me like the only explanation for how CONSTANTLY leaks come out, and how they’re basically never actually damaging to the game or the company, while being REALLY effective at stirring up obsession in the fanbase, and driving people to invest more time and money into the game to be prepped to get the next new character immediately on release.

    Also how so many of the leakers would release extremely accurate stats and numbers, but then drop statements like “if I release any more than this, I’d be risking my safety” or “since everyone’s been asking about it, I’ll go ahead and confirm X, but after this I’m gonna have to go on hiatus for a while, until things cool down”. Seems like nonsense meant to either inflate the leaker’s ego, or rile up the fanbase.

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    Personal reddit conspiracy theory as to why image hosting is on site:

    1. r/fatpeoplehate exists, does its thing (hating fat people)
    2. They get some images removed from imgur, the image host du juor of reddit at the time.
    3. They go on the offensive and start harassing fat imgur workers.
    4. The subreddit gets banned.
    5. Under a year later, reddit puts in image uploading.

    My theory is that 3 resulted in imgur hitting up reddit and threatening to block the site if they didn’t reign in fatpeoplehate. Reddit did, by 4, because the alternative was no images and that would absolutely fuck reddit up. This in turn leads to 5 to prevent that powerplay again.

    • 🐋 Color 🍁 ♀@lemm.ee
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      Wow, that was an actual subreddit? This is new information to me. My goodness… I don’t get why some people hate people because they’re overweight. It literally does not affect them in the slightest what someone looks like, and people can be overweight for a variety of reasons. We should love eachother, not hate for the pettiest of reasons.

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        I don’t condone their actions or views but I remember when that sub existed and I can shed some light on the fat hate redpill train of thought.

        They tried to justify it saying that fat people were a drain on society because of health issues. They took up space in hospital rooms that could otherwise be used for “healthy people with real problems”. Like they saw being fat as an issue that the person could fix by themselves, and they shouldn’t take up medical resources. And they drive up insurance costs for companies because being fat is like a pre existing condition etc.

        But what was it at the end of the day? A hate group. I get that America and other places have issues with weight, but the solution is not hate.

    • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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      Probable. And Reddit didn’t want to do so initially because, of many reasons, this way they also offload the liability on Imgur.

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    There’s a user here, who was ‘101’ at reddthat, then piefed, then feddit.org, and was 911 at lemmynsfw, and is currently 911 at programming.dev, who posts a bunch of articles over a week or so, then deletes their account and moves on to another instance. They’re up to something, surely. (the only real downside to this behaviour - that I can think of - is that new instances won’t be able to get their posts, because Lemmy doesn’t return posts for deleted users)

    • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
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      What does this mean? What is 101 and 911? I understand 101 to be the basic information of a course and 911 to be the number for emergencies. I’m trying to understand what you wrote here.

    • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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      I can see instance shopping to find the perfect one, a week is about how long it takes to get a good sense of the local community. Too bad about the lost content though.

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    Despite being one of the highest earning movies of all time, no body watched James Cameron’s Avatar.

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      I have never seen so much money spent on something so boring and predictable. Don’t get me started on Avatar 2, that was a 3 hour water simulation that still somehow managed to be naff because of annoying cartoony characters.

      My pet (very) silly theory is that both were a cover for military investment in fluid dynamics simulations and they had to hide hours of 3d renders and water simulations in plain sight.

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        I watched the first one and know a lot of people who did. I even know people who went to see the second one.

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      I watched it in theaters six times. I love that movie. Sure, it’s the same story as like 6 other movies, but it’s got big sexy blue aliens.

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      I was dragged along to see it at the cinema in the (then) new 3D format (versus the old red/blue glasses).

      Took me 10 minutes to realise the story is Pocahontas, so I’ve always thought of it as Pocahontas Smurfs. And the 3D, while a cool novelty, gave me motion sickness something fierce.

      While clearly no money was spent on the script, it did move animation technology and adoption along quite a bit.

      Gobsmacked a sequel was made.

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      I never watched Avatar, because i know how it will be. There’s only a certain amount of special effects that can keep me focused on something that lacks in all other areas.

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        I tried watching it like 3 times and gave up after 30-40 minutes it’s so generic.

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    Elon Musk is paying anti-immigration and anti-trans groups like the Tanron network to spread their rhetoric on social media.

    Oh wait that one is true. Filthy piece of shit.

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    Just posted about this in a different thread:

    The US senators: mitch mcconnell, ted cruz, and lindsey graham used fraud to win their respective seats in 2020. All three were in tight races according to the polls but all three won with bigger margins than was to be expected.

    This idea came from a few articles that were discussing this issue a few days after the election, then those articles all just disappeared.

    Maybe the articles disappeared because there was no fraud

    Maybe the articles disappeared because there was?

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    They build our houses specifically to be inefficient at staying cool, then they sell us AC units and power to cool down our inefficient houses. They must be stopped.

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      I’m sure my grandpa who built my house didn’t have a clue on climate efficiency lol. Nowadays in the country I live in, it’s mandatory to build efficient buildings

    • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.ee
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      so your “They” are an organized cabal of architects, construction workers, manufacturers of air conditioners and power plant operators all working in tandem?

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        No, more like developers who don’t really care about efficiency, and manufacturers just doing their thing. It’s less of a “conspiracy” and more of a “we build our houses wrong”.

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      I dunno man. My new build house (nothing fancy, just a basic starter SFH) is pretty great at staying cool. We can keep the thermostat at 78 all day and we’re comfy.

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    That Absolute, see also here, is something nefarious, possibly used for industrial espionage. My company is a client and using one of its IP addresses, I could see documentation that was quite concerning. In the background, it checks all of your files for anything that looks like a password, a social security number or a credit card number, then uploads these files to some server to protect them… What’s really weird is that I cannot access the same information from an outside IP address, but here’s a review, corroborating parts of it. Make of it what you will!

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      I read through that and maybe I missed where they are uploading personal data to a server? What I read is that it checks the computer and files and can interpret when there are personal data things on a PC in order to provide a score to help IT know how sensitive a computer’s data might be?

      It says the identification is done at the endpoint and the contents of the file are not available. I don’t see anything about copying and storing that data somewhere on their systems that I saw. Maybe I am missing something…

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        My company may appear similar, but I’ve been through the code - when they say they quarantine some stuff and create a legal archive of other stuff, hey really do, and no ones getting to it without jumping through a lot of hoops

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          Interesting. I’ll have to read up on this stuff. I’m working on making a career jump into IT so this will be right up my alley to learn about. Thank you.

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      Absolute is crazy. I work at an organization that uses it. It lives in the bios level and is essentially a root kit. I understand how it is useful for lost/stolen devices, but it way over steps a lot of boundaries.

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      If they ever get compromised all their customers will have a fun time. I wonder if their is a bail out plan.