I am a hillbilly occasionally cosplaying as a smart and educated person

Same. Which explains why I (twice, lol) incorrectly used the terms “theory” and “hypothesis” interchangeably when those are totally different things in sciences.

I’m not entirely 100% dark matter exists in galaxies the way often described. … The way I see it, it might as well be a repulsive force between galaxies opposed to the current understanding of it being am attractive force. Plus, if it were a phenomenon that pushed things apart, it could also explain Dark Energy.

And to me, that’s a perfectly valid theory. Like other proposed explanations for dark matter or dark energy or “whatever the hell it is we can detect the effect of but can’t identify”, it’s difficult to test.

That’s why I enjoy science. It’s like a big puzzle, and sometimes you get halfway done and realize you put it together wrong and have to start over.

The thing with dark matter is it’s just a placeholder term for “we don’t know what the hell it is”, and aren’t most hypotheses pulled out of the ass before experimentation to prove them?

Plus, Dr. Kaku is a string theorist so wacky is pretty much par for the course in that field. Granted, I consider him more of a TV personality these days and grew up watching him as a speaker on [insert any number of Discovery Channel shows here].

Maybe I’m just biased and enjoy the wacky theories because I’m more interested in seeing them proven right or wrong and thinking about the implications if they happen to prove correct.

Yes

While the amount of content from such an increase would be the same, the posting patterns are more organic from real users compared to the indiscriminate torrent coming from people running bots to repost everything from Reddit. That allows for a lot more granular management of resources.

Guess that just illustrates that social media addiction is a real problem. I’ve never found myself in that position, but every once in a while I’m reminded that it exists.

I’ve been here since the API exodus in 2023 and have seen it enough times to know that it’s typically someone coming in new from reddit, seeing that the feed of new stuff here has an endpoint and recharges slower, so they want to make a repost bot so there’s more content. They’ll never actually read that content, but they just want it so they have something to mindlessly scroll past. I don’t think they’re going for popularity contest, at least not primarily, anyway.

Giving them the benefit of doubt, I think they’re just highly misguided.

I could totally be wrong. This is just based on my observations and the occasional post in c/Fediverse when some new user talks about how it feels inactive here and suggests reposting crap from Reddit. I also try to go with the most charitable explanation for behavior I see.

Technically speaking, yeah.

But the instances that run on donations are more likely to get donations to cover the growing hosting costs from a 100x increase in real users as opposed to one bot spammer spewing out 100+ user’s worth of content each month. Ideally, that 100x increase won’t be concentrated on a single instance and will be spread out among many instances.

While the amount of content from such an increase would be the same, the posting patterns are more organic from real users compared to the indiscriminate torrent coming from people running bots to repost everything from Reddit. That allows for a lot more granular management of resources.

In short: it’s low-engagement spam.

In longer form:

It’s just blasted out via a bot and not posted organically. It makes scrolling by /new impossible because of all the noise. It’s bad because it strips away any identity the Fediverse has and makes it a literal cheap copy of Reddit full of bot-reposted slop no one wants to engage with.

Instances are run by volunteers and rely on donations from users or in some cases the admins foot the bill entirely. It costs money to host Fediverse instances. Each sloppost from a repost bot takes up space in the database, consumes CPU resources sorting through it, bandwidth to federate it out, and takes up storage space with the local thumbnails. And that’s just on the home instance where it originates. Add in the bandwidth to federate it out to who knows how many receiving instances which each also have to store it in the database and store the thumbnails.

It’s just so much waste. And for what? It’s just noise. Content for content’s sake so someone can mindlessly scroll past stuff they’ll never read.

If you feel this place lacks content, post something. Every time there’s a new influx of users, some genius thinks “It’s a lot quieter here than Reddit. I know! I’ll write a script that reposts stuff from Reddit. People will love it! I can’t believe no one has thought of this before! I’m so smart!”

If one wants that kind of slop, there are dedicated instances that do nothing but repost reddit garbage indiscriminately. alien.top and lemmit.online. Find an instance that federates with them (many instances de-federate from those because of the noise) or sign up there.

I’m not gonna out the user since that would put this post in violation of one of the rules here, but it appears they’ve set up camp and created their own communities to botspam to. I DM’d the admin of their home instance but who knows if they’ll see a problem with it.

Edit/Update: That spammer now appears to be banned on their home instance.

For me, it’s the people that come here and feel the need to bring all of Reddit with them. Like, do they also bring their shitty exes and all their baggage on dates with their new SO?

And it’s not like instances are largely (entirely?) volunteer run and rely on donations or admins footing the bill for hosting. Oh, wait. They are. 18,200+ posts (as of this comment) from a two month old account with the associated thumbnail images, each federated out to who knows how many other instances that store copies and local thumbnails is a pretty clear abuse of the platform. I’d also wager that the userbot in question isn’t donating to their home instance, either.

Every time there’s an influx. :bangs_head_against_wall:

My Kroger card is 23 years old and is the same one I found in the parking lot of the Kroger near my dorm in college. Found it there and have used it since. The mag strip is long worn off and the barcode takes several tries to scan, but it works. I did take a scan of it about 7 or 8 years ago when it was more legible, so I may print that copy and laminate it for another 23 years lol.

Yep.

In short, it is an incoherent conspiracy theory that spreads wide and far, not paying any attention to boundaries of time, space, or area of expertise. “Which is all to say that another piece of flagrant nonsense has ascended to the highest levels of U.S. politics and media,” writes the Atlantic’s Daniel Engber. “To call it a conspiracy theory would be far too kind, because no comprehensive theory has been floated to explain the pattern of events. But then, even the phrase pattern of events is imprecise, because there is no pattern here at all. Given all the people who could have been roped into this narrative but weren’t, any hope of finding meaning falls away. Barring any dramatic new disclosures, the mystery of the missing scientists has the dubious honor of being a sham in every way at once.”

• https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientists/686885/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20260422172202/https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientists/686885/

The Atlantic: High Credibility, High factual reporting rating, left-center bias. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-atlantic/

Adding this to my reaction image collection.

Was it because Blanche is a southern belle and said “you all” instead of “y’all”? Cause I had to grumble about that at first.

And Linux, but agreed lol.

Yeah. Lenin, Marx, Betty White, and the Golden Girls.

Sorry not sorry. Had to meme that

I’d be tempted to dive down and see if I can get her running again. If I do, I’ll sell tickets off this crazy rock.

I used to use Element for Android but it would always screw up the encryption keys in group chats, so I went to SchildiChat and it’s been fantastic.

Apparently my body is on a 26 hour day because it’s not in the mood at all during the current 24 hours.