In the second hypothesis it wouldn’t be self-inserting; it’s more like the author explaining something to the readers, outside the story.

I’ve never noticed this usage of the past tense in the appendix about Newspeak - you’re right, it does. And it’s also written in standard English, so interpreting it as written in a world after Oceania fell is viable.

And following this line of thought we could even interpret the main story as a narrative within another.

Another possibility is that the appendix is not written in-universe, and uses the past tense because it’s how people expect storytelling to be written in English, with Orwell speaking directly to the reader instead of Winston Smith.

This is not exactly what you’re asking for (media inside media), but it’s really close in spirit (nested narratives), and I really like it: a book written in Portuguese in the XIX century, called Noite na Taverna (Night in the Tavern).

The book has an overarching story of friends telling each other stories in a tavern, over booze; with all those nested stories being about love, despair, and death (it has a strong gothic vibe).

And, as each character tells the others a story, there’s always that fishy smell that the story might be actually bullshit; and other characters do raise some doubts about its in-universe veracity (like Bertram does to Solfieri). And you, as the reader, do the same - but in no moment you question the veracity of the overarching story, and you feel like you’re inside the tavern alongside the drunkards.

So it’s a lot like the author is toying with your suspension of disbelief - redirecting it from the overarching story to the nested stories, and as you doubt the later you get even more immersed into the former.

If I must use an example of media within media, then my choice would be “The Book” within Orwell’s 1984. I think that it’s a great piece because it shows Orwell’s views on politics and society, while still serving narrative and worldbuilding purpose - for Winston it’s a material proof of the Inner Party’s bullshit, for O’Brien it’s a tool of the Inner Party to sniff out dissidence. (Note: 1984 is extremely misrepresented nowadays, I’m aware, but I still like it.)

It conveys “I have such a disdain for that thing that I’m asterisking its name like it was a slur or swear word”.

I’m not a big fan either, even if you can find some secondary roles for that (as keeping someone from finding it, like ilinamorato exemplified). It distracts the reader from what is being said to the author’s personal opinion about what is being said.

Possible? Yes. Desirable? No; at least, not for most news sources - the extreme sells better than the simply informative, and often this lack of precision is how they manipulate your views towards a certain subject.

True that. And you reminded me a tidbit of human nature, that interferes in this situation:

If you mince words to make something look stronger, weaker, better, worse than it is, plenty people fall for it. Because they care too much about how something is said (the words) and too little about what is being said (the discourse).

To prevent the empire would be more complicated than it looks like, since you got multiple rebellions and civil wars popping up as early as 135 BCE. They ultimately boiled down to

• plebeians and/or slaves pissed due to poor living conditions
• local peoples rebelling against Roman oppression
• some patrician family wanting a larger slice of the pie

And those are all problems that are damn hard to address without leading to plebeians being manipulated, local peoples being suppressed, and cutting down the power of the patricians by a central, strong government. That’s basically what Caesar tried to do, and Octavian achieved.

Accordingly to the USB inventor, he didn’t make it reversible right off the bat because it would need 2x more wires, circuits, and cost 2x more. So you probably [won’t be | weren’t]* able to convince him.

Perhaps a better approach is to tell him that they should be clearly asymmetric, to both touch and sight. Like HDMI connectors are.

*tense marking is fun in time travel.

It’s the result of the “bombastic” mix of false dichotomy, assumptions, and social media dynamics.

False dichotomy prevents you from noticing nuances, complexities, third sides, or gradations. Under a false dichotomy, there’s no such thing as “Alice and Bob are bad, but Alice is worse than Bob”; no, either they’re equally bad (thus both deserve to die), or one of them is good.

In the meantime, assumptions prevent you from handling uncertainties, as the person “fills the blanks” of the missing info with whatever crap supports their conclusion. For example you don’t know if Bob kills puppies or not, but you do know that he jaywalks, right? So you assume that he kills puppies too, thus deserving death.

I’m from the firm belief that people who consistent and egregiously engage in discourse showing both things are muppets causing harm to society, and deserve to be treated as such. (Note: “consistent and egregiously” are key words here. A brainfart or two is fine, as long as there’s at least the attempt of handling additional bits of info and/or complexity.)

Then there are the social media dynamics. I feel like a lot of users here already addressed them really well, but to keep it short: social media gives undue exposure to idiots doing the above due to anonymity, detachment from the situation, self-reinforcing loops (“circlejerks”), so goes on.

That includes me. Or at least my geospoofed location for the sake of google search (when I need to use it - I’d rather use DDG but… meh), so Google stops trying to sell me local shit.

Sorry, I know that this is a thread for people who dislike anime to voice their reasons, but do you mind some rec? Based on what you said, I feel like you’d enjoy Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood quite a bit:

• there’s a lot of substance in FMA:B in the theme, worldbuilding, character interactions.
• there are fight scenes but they never overstay their welcome. They don’t feel tiring like in Dragon Ball Z or similar.
• characters are relatable. For example, the two protags fuck it up big time, right at the start, and yet can you really blame them? You’d probably do the same in their situation.
• there’s practically no sexualisation of female characters. Arguably only one of the villains, but that’s done for characterisation and it would feel off otherwise, it isn’t there for fanservice.

[Note: I’m not recommending this to change your views or some crap like that, it’s just that as I was reading your list of issues I was thinking “true that… wait, FMA:B doesn’t do it!”]

Take care of your body. It’s only getting worse after that age, so you need to ensure that it doesn’t go too fast.

Take care of your mind. Culture yourself, have fun, rest properly, cut off from your social life people who cause you psychological harm.

Set your own values. It’s fine if you change them later on, but you need some way to ground your actions that is not “do what other people tell you to”.

Learn your limits. Some are higher, some are lower, than the average person; just don’t assume that you can handle vodka, work nonstop, or scale cliffs as well as someone else does. Stop punishing yourself for those limits being too low, and stop abusing the limits that are higher.

Learn how to budget. “Economise money” is easier said than done, I know; but once shit hits the fan, it’s best if you know which expenses you can cut, temporarily or permanently, as well as the impact of doing so in your life.

Find people whom you can rely on. Even if you’re an introvert, even if you hate dealing with people. Family, friends, you call it. And make sure that they can rely on you, it’s give-and-take.

I typically interpret it two ways:

• egregiously poor quality content, that does not contribute with a topic
• unpretentious content posted for the sake of fun and entertainment

Which is which depends on context.

For further info, here’s Gazeta do Povo’s article, from 14/Jan/2023, that this one refers to… or rather copypastes without linking - the overall discourse and claims are the same.

Okay. Can I be honest here? This is piles of propaganda coming from multiple sides, and anyone claiming to know the truth is probably just assuming. It’s a bloody mess of interests.

And since I do not know the veracity of the claims themselves, I’ll instead focus on who is saying what, and the likely reason why.

The original is from a conservative newspaper from my city, Curitiba. It used to serve our local audience (Paraná state) but, around 2015 or so, the overall focus shifted: instead of being Paraná’s newspaper it became Brazil’s right wing newspaper. The motivation was simply “selling subscriptions for outsiders”.

That article’s claim about Confucius Institute promoting a hidden agenda ultimately backtracks to FBI and CIA (note: this article is linked as source in the other one that I’ve linked.) I’ll leave as an exercise for the readers to guess how trustable the USA government is when it comes to China, and vice versa, given that both countries are fighting a cold war.

Now let’s talk about Diálogo Américas. It’s directly tied with USA’s military - its own words

Diálogo is a “U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) activity comprising a website, a print magazine, and associated social media devoted to building partnership and cooperation among partner nations.”

Given the backstory of relationships between the government of USA and other governments of the Americas, this can be safely rephrased as “we’re military, devoted to enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine.”

Ah, and most likely China is doing its thing too in this regard. How much, we do not know. It might be worth checking what those partnerships with universities are about; there’s a lot of room for propaganda in something like social studies, but if it’s something like semiconductors or the likes the claim is probably bollocks.

Are you noticing what’s happening here?

• USA’s espionage agencies say something.
• A newspaper that backstabbed its own homeland says: “hey, I can use what the above said! It’s from some outside source so people won’t dispute it!”
• USA’s military “activity”: “hey, I can use what that newspaper is saying! It’s from some outside source so people won’t dispute it!”

It’s like a telephone game done for the sake of the context-tomy.

My prediction is different: I think that, in the long term, banning targetted ads will have almost no impact on the viability of ad-supported services, or the amount of ads per page.

Advertisement is an arms race; everyone needs to use the most efficient technique available, not just to increase their sales but to prevent them from decreasing - as your competitor using that technique will get the sales instead.

But once a certain technique is banned, you aren’t the only one who can’t use it; your competitors can’t either.

And the price of the ad slot is intrinsically tied to that. When targetted ads were introduced, advertisers became less willing to pay for non-targetted ads; decreased demand led to lower prices, and thus lower revenue to people offering those ad slots on their pages, forcing those people to offer ad slots with targetted advertisement instead. Banning targetted ads will simply revert this process, placing the market value of non-targetted ad slots back where it used to be.

No one is forced to use our advertising technologies – they choose to use them because they’re effective.

Like an antlion saying “ants aren’t forced to fall into my trap! They choose to!”.

Google’s advertisement monopoly is directly associated with its other monopolies: browser monopoly, search, mobile OS, video sharing. It can use each of those monopolies to change the rules of the game ever slightly, to prevent competitors from entering or remaining into the market.

Of course they do. Beans, no poop challenge, ???, profit!!! repeat as needed.

(…we need more memes!)

The difference is sort of like the difference between a qualified ESL teacher and a native English speaker […]

This example is perfect - native teachers (regardless of the language being taught) are often clueless on which parts of their languages are hard to master, because they simply take it for granted. Just like zoomers with tech - they take for granted that there’s some “app”, that you download it, without any further thought on where it’s stored or how it’s programmed or anything like that.

The [hi]story of my life in a single pic. (My tarot deck is even the same as the one in the pic, a Rider-Waite.)

As others highlighted this is not surprising given that Gen Z uses phones a lot more than computers, and writing in one is completely different than in the other.

[Discussion from multiple comments ITT] It’s also damn slower to write in a phone screen, simply because it’s smaller - you need a bit more precision to hit the keys, and there’s no room to use all the fingers (unlike in a physical keyboard).

Swiping helps, but it brings up its own problems - the keyboard application needs to “guess” what you’re typing, and correcting mistakes consumes time; you need to look at the word being “guessed” instead of either the keyboard or the text being written, so your accuracy goes down (increasing the odds of wrong “guesses”); and eventually you need to tap write a few words anyway, so you’re basically required to type well two ways instead of just one to get any semblance of speed.