OddOpinions5

I regularly receive email newsletters from indivisible and my local democratic committee

and the format of these newsletters is just awful

I view these in my firefox browser on a wintel laptop and my email provider is comcast

am I the only grouchy person who has this problem, or the only one who whines about it ??

one of the *many wierd things about the internet is that the websites for ultra hi priced luxury items are always the worst websites

eg
https://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/en_US/bespoke/coachbuild/arcadia-droptail.html

Free from the little free library around the corner !!

now, for the one or two days ayear when I don't have enough to worry about . .

not sure why @sk76 won't let me quote this post

but a reminder that in the 1980s, there were a lot of REALLY big cars in the US; indeed, we were famous for our giant "boats"

now they weren't as tall or heavy as today's monsters, that is true

but they had terrible gas mileage

click the adobe pdf icon here
https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/94006IXN.TXT?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=1976+Thru+1980&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5Czyfiles%5CIndex%20Data%5C76thru80%5CTxt%5C00000040%5C94006IXN.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=x&ZyPURL#

RE: https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/05/14/hype-for-the-future-195h-city-of-new-hampton-iowa/

I've been away at bluesky for awhile

and now that I am back here, I find my "Home" feed dominated by bots like this

which is kind of sad
but block is good !!

I think the spam detection software must be getting a little better, cause all the spammers have to resort to using weird, obviously suspicous email account names

like jacobr1996b3jpmu3

nothing wierd about that email name !!

RE: https://mindly.social/@JohnAutry/116574491784585281

it says a lot about American "liberals" that the all know about Kent State, where white kids were shot, but very few know about this

RE: https://mastodon.hongkongers.net/@glcanada_mirror/116574459433208086

I can't read the article due to my adblocker, but the post doesn't say

"ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION "

WHICH IS A RED FLAG FOR CLICKBAIT !!

the top two people at Amnesty International, US, were paid close to US $400,000 in 2024 (I didn't see the 2025 return)

To me, that is still to high, so I won't donate to amnesty

but maybe I'm being an asshat

Question
When I donate money to a charity, one thing I look for his how much the CEO is paid

eg, the ACLU is doing a lot of good work, but according to their 2024 tax return, the CEO was paid over 1.3 million dollars !!

So in 2024/2025, I did no give money to the ACLU, cause I thought the CEO's salary was absurd

According to the 2025 tax return, the 2highest paid people are paid US $600,000/yr
which to me is still grotesque, so no money to ACLU !!

now, lets look at Amnesty international

Cranky Old Guy says

if we banned electronic to do lists, and you had to keep your to do list on paper, is that good or bad ?

right now, this post (image) is the top post when I click on the "trending" button

It has 493 reposts and 246 likes

not sure, but far as I can tell, the top image is fake

not a good look for fedi , IMO

far as I can tell, most of us here on mastodon think google is evil

but is there a *real alternative ?

people often mention duck duck go, but far as I can tell, DDG is based on microsoft Bing, and MS is as bad, or almost as bad as G

given that a modern search engine has to cost enormous sums of money to setup and maintain, I don't see how one can have a truly indepedent search engine

#google #duckduckGo #microsoft #tech

does anyone else think that most of the posts from lemmy are crap ?

the wiki article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Rashid_Street_(Gaza)

has many links about the destruction in the gaza strip, I didn't see an image that looks like this

RE: https://mastodon.online/@streetartutopia/116572581015397633

Can anyone who has actually been to Gaza, or who speaks Arabic, verify that this widely shared image is real ?

if you google
Al-Rasheed Street gaza
with a custom date range, before Oct7th, you don't see anything that looks like the image below
given how striking this mosque is, I find it odd that there are not more images of it

ditto if you search G for images of
mosques in gaza strip

I will never stop being amused at how FOSS types, who believe so strongly in freedom, such as those who created Mastodon, don't understand that freedom means bots can overrun and destroy your place

which, far as I can tell, is what has happened to mastodon in th last year, the bots have taken control