OpenStars

True. But the time before that they lost. And on and on the cycle goes! :-P

It's... just life. e.g. it is not only trucks - it is the same with SUVs, and Jeeps. I heard (no idea if it is true) that the original Jeeps were brought home from like the Korean/Vietnam wars, and were still military style, like had like zero padding on the seats, much less windows or AC.

People also wear clothing in a similar manner too - how many people wear cargo shorts while not hiking, or active/fit-wear while just loafing around. Billionaires purchase yachts and then they literally never leave the harbor. Trump has a literal model wife, who it seems he is never allowed to touch. People purchase iPhones, and then use it as a phone but never listen to any music from it.

Given the luxuries available today, people purchase things based on "how it makes them feel", rather than whatever it was originally meant for. Trucks are a symbol of independence - like, "I could move a large furniture item - I never have and I never will, but I could, and I like how that makes me feel! Also I tower over all ya'all and I enjoy how I block the fucking road so that you can't see past me when I'm 5 feet past the line and you cannot make the turn that you legally should have been allowed to if it were not for this mobile obstruction blocking the fucking roadways... um, [cough], I mean I like it."

Naw, they just don't want to scratch their pretty truck.

... wait for it...

Oh no, I am sorry for your loss. Yeah, Bernie is the one politician that I would expect to not sell your personal phone number, but he cannot control every single person all the way through his entire campaign staff, and it looks like someone, somewhere leaked it.:(

You have been identified as someone who is "vulnerable to this form of persuasion", just b/c you gave a single damn about someone, all of once. Consent means nothing to these MFers.

And somewhere early on in Trump's reign of terror, laws were changed and re-codified and staff were swapped out and also the FCC was de-funded (along with the SEC) and to make a long story short, they can get away with this crap much more easily than they could before.

If it helps, the only thing I have found that is foolproof is to put the phone in "Do Not Disturb" mode permanently. That can allow exceptions for callers already in your Contacts list, often also allowing people to get through to you it if they call twice from the same number within the space of a few minutes (e.g. a hospital that would register as an unknown caller but has a legitimate purpose for such). The only other alternative would be to use a special app to try to recognize known spam callers, but that is a constant cat-and-mouse game, not only for the callers identities but also with the app itself that keeps getting its databases or codebases hacked by malicious actors, so I just use Do Not Disturb.

Eventually they may give up if they have seen no activity or proper response from you, but I can virtually guarantee that that process will be measured in YEARS not days, especially this year. So: Do Not Disturb may be your only salvation:-(.

Sigh... now watch as the DNC manages to fumble this. Truly we live in the worst timeline - elections should not be equivalent to playing Russian Roulette:-(.

(doesn't exactly fit, but still funny enough to share, I hope!:-P)

I don't use Arch, but I still think that Windows is, if not the absolute worst for your machine, then it at least ranks highly in that category:-).

I get spam calls ofc, but I have never once gotten such a text. I have also never donated to a political entity, for precisely this reason. It looks like your number got put onto a list somewhere and people are just passing it around like candy.

Eventually it will wrap back around to being edgy and cool in an ironic manner:-).

Welcome to the Fediverse!

Indeed, people are quite a bit more welcoming here than Reddit - ofc not everywhere, but more so, on average. If it helps, you can block not only individual users communities, but even whole entire instances - the latter by going into your profile, scrolling way down, and adding the instance name to that list. Do what you want, but for me, when TENS of people continue to spam-reply me WEEKS after I STOP responding, that's the signal that they are refusing to control themselves, so I take matters into my own hands and block them. For that reason I blocked hexbear and lemmygrad.ml, and some people block lemmy.ml too but I do enjoy their memes and such and just stay out of their politics community so I have not gone that far for that one. If this describes you, note that this can improve your experience in the Fediverse by perhaps 90% so may be WORTH IT. People from those instances can still reply to your posts and comments, but you will not receive notifications anymore, nor see them while you are logged in:-).

One thing more I wanted to make sure that you and your friends know: DMs are not private. I don't know of any actual tools that makes reading someone's DMs possible, but the signals are out there and not only admins but anyone could, in theory. Probably that won't matter 99% of the time but e.g. sending physical addresses or phone numbers would be easy to scan for across the Fediverse by malicious actors.

Anyway, I hope you feel welcomed! (fwiw, I am not a woman, I just wanted to share these thoughts in case they would be helpful:-)

Let's go Brandon! (have we reclaimed that yet? surely we plan to, I would think? well anyway it works in this highly specific case:-D)

There is no higher irony that I can think of than a pilgrim man-splaining feminism to an actual witch.

Internet level: peaked, it's all downhill from here! :-P