He saw that pic of the Pope with drip and it spooked him. This is a joke but that pic actually spooked me. It was the first AI pic I saw that I thought was a real photo.

Agreed. During the pandemic, I adopted a policy of unsubbing to any subreddit that made me angry. Usually this came in the form of people bringing up trump/capitalism/whatever out of completely nowhere. luckily the Beehaw people seem to be pretty good about actually having conversations and not just devolving into mocking trump every second. But whenever I venture into some of the other instances, I see some of Lemmy’s true colors. Chronically online people completely out of touch with reality kinda run shit around here.

Federated alternatives are slowly building steam and people seem to have gotten pretty salty about corporate social media

I think you’re overselling the importance of this one. When I’ve talked to friends about federated alternatives, they really aren’t interested. Even if they hated Twitter/reddit and think they’ve gotten worse, they just don’t really care about a federated alternative. I’ve heard some interest in threads, so maybe we count that?

I’m now imagining rgb trains. Mechanical turn styles, high refresh rate info screens, giant AIO coolers.