That doesn’t sound like the 1%. There are 3.6 million 1%ers in the US alone, by definition. Being in the 1% might you very comfortable but it won’t necessarily make you an evil overlord. For that I suspect you need to be in the 0.001% (meaning there’s 3600ish in the US, a more manageable group of absolute bastard. There aren’t 3.6 million disgustingly rich people in the US.

Calling cards. That’s how we did it. Cheap, international calls by pre-dialling another number first. Still cost a fortune.

Before the age of 20: Made gunpowder and made our own enormous firecrackers/hand grenades, played with matches, climbed to the very top of very tall trees, whittled with knives all day long, cutting into high pressure car tyres with knives, made “bazookas” with firework rockets and shot them after other kids on the street, made petrol powered go-carts and raced them on public streets, disappeared out to play all day and came home for dinner, swam in lakes, climbed rocks with sheer drops into the bay, disturbed enormous ant-nests and got bitten all over (I’m sorry ants, that was a shit thing to do), dipped our fingers in melted wax, placed small stones on train tracks and waited for them to get pulverised, played a crazy game that involved throwing knives into the ground right next to bare feet, chopped firewood with sharp axes, burnt large holes in the carpet in my room (turned out a piece of tin foil was not sufficient insulation for burning sparker powder), did a lot of sleeping outside, threw each other into forests of nettles for fun, crawled through drain pipes running under the road, skateboarded down hills on country side roads, built our own skateboard ramp out of doors and nails that were sticking out ready to impale us, walked on thin ice because we liked the cracking it caused, did night time hikes through swamps, wild water rafting, sprayed burning gasoline out of bicycle pumps, played with aerosol cans and lighters, flew gliders age 15, got drunk a lot from 15 onwards (not at the same time as flying), took down the school computers with a homegrown “virus” (that’s being generous, a few scripts that modified autoexec.bat to make all the school’s computers print “teachers are dumb” instead of booting; it still caused them to call in “the experts”, got into fights and ended up going to A&E after being hit in the head with an iron rod, raided countless pear and apple plantations, played with magnifying glasses in the sharp sun and lit up a great deal of forest floors, rode cars down old train tracks, shot guns, shot air rifles, shot bows, shot cross bows, shot sling shots, maced each other, built large swings that threw us over a cliff side and four-five meter drops into water, played around inside a nuclear-protected naval bunker and accidentally activated the emergency lock down alarm, tipped over an army truck after being let out to to “do a bit of terrain driving” by our staff sergeant, set up and blew up 600 kg of TNT to demonstrate the effect of a MRLS cluster bomb in front of the Danish Queen (fun story, it blew her hat off from the pressure wave), fells asleep behind the wheel after a full day of firefighting training and ended up putting my army jeep into a field, made friends with a Soviet diplomat who tried to pump my brother and I for information about our dad’s job as a military attaché (unfortunately the colonel got sent home to Russia after being made persona non grata) - though he did teach us how to ski in the process, set up our own 380V electrics for a enormous LAN party we organised and electrocuted myself, dialled into a lot of weird BBSes to exchange all sorts of pirated software with anonymous network users, war-dialled various remote systems and tried to hack our way into them, drove all over Europe in various wrecks (accidentally smuggled weed over several international borders, which was especially frustrating as I didn’t touch the stuff and didn’t even know it had been brought), did magic mushrooms and had amazing times and dreadful bad trips (fuck MAO inhibitors), went exploring in a fenced off zone that carried nuclear warning signs (Paldiski, not long after the wall came down), detonated gas canisters of all shapes and sizes, etc etc

It was a fun childhood, to be honest, and I’m grateful for it.

Seinfeld for me.

Closely followed by IT Crowd

I didn’t, for me it was “Ai, Bee, See, Dee, Eee, Eff, Jee” (except in my local language Danish). My children all learnt phonics in their U.K. school and it’s taught them to read 5x faster I’d say).

Lol, they did you a favour. It’s the only instance I ban.

Came in support of Apollo; I just couldn’t in good conscience continue to support Reddit (even after 19 years) with how they treated external clients.

Found it similar to Reddit so it scratched the same itch.

I agree my characterisation is far off the mark. But the poster I responded to wasn’t even in the same galaxy, so I still considered it an improvement.

Also, I’m not Jesus Christ 🤪

Man, these days you know a hexbear without even looking at the user.

I mean this is complete baloney! You are also using the comparison to establish some kind of “evil slavers vs democracy” narrative that wasn’t in place at all in China during the warlord era. They were all equally horrid.

This is, at best, akin to a war between all states in the US after the Boston Tea Party and a communist state, let’s just pick Arizona, slowly winning the wars and forcing the remaining faction onto Hawaii. Then the socialist party forced anyone who could read, more or less, to work themselves to death in a field in the name of communism. Glory to the people!!!

No not all hexbear users are farmed trolls. I think most are doing China and Russia’s bidding out of misunderstandings about the world and what really happens inside those two countries.

I think some hexbear users are farmed trolls and/bots.

I can understand that because you feel duped, you find it hard to trust anything the US says today.

I didn’t feel duped, though. It was clearly an insane lie meant to justify a neocon, hawkish invasion of Iraq and Bush Jr was desperate to “finish the job” and get a pat on his back by Bush.

The world is super complex. Not everything the West does is good - there’s plenty of examples in history, less from present day but definitely cases (Iraq is an awful example). Similarly, not everything China does is bad, far from it. I’ve travelled there extensively and work with Chinese citizens every single day. I have no hate for Chinese people - count many as my friend and they’re both hard working and fun to be around after work (once you get to know them). There’s plenty of things to like in China. And once you get to know Chinese people well, they will tell you story after story about the insanity inside their own country - that they are well aware of. They laugh at their own government.

So I’m not confused about the balance of things. On balance, the West is a far better influence on the world and care-taker of its citizens than China is. And let’s not get started on the Russian state, which is an oligarchic kleptocracy driven to violence by its isolated dictator.

I’m hardly ever this condescending. I’ve made a special exception to hexbear users who’ve been brigading almost all posts about China and Russia since you federated again.

You’ve been telling everyone how you feel about libs since you federated, so I’m sure you will continue with or without me.

I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself for three years, you should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.

LOL. I definitely did not believe Iraq had WMDs. It was insane what the US and its partners did in Iraq. It solved nothing. It probably made things worse in the Middle East, at least for 20 years, and it cost a lot of lives.

But let’s not use that fact to say everything the West is doing is wrong. Just like a few of the good things China doesn’t make everything China does correct.

I don’t think all of you are farmed trolls. My apologies if that’s how it was heard.

I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have degenerated into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category.

If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions, you shouldn’t haven’t federated with the real world.

One has to pick one’s battles; it’s not always worth one’s time to debate the raving drunk on the street corner, even if what he is saying is wrong.

It’s so cute how you think that means you’re right.

I mean the prevention of downvotes is pretty much the only thing I agree with :)

It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears.

Yes yes, if I didn’t want your opinion I should have stayed on Reddit.

Yes, yes, you got here first.

Yes, yes, I’m a brainwashed liberal.

Yes, yes, you’re actually one of the oldest Lemmy communities but you’ve only recently started federating.

Yes, yes, you’re seeing the light and can see through the western media’s bias and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.

Yes, yes, China is great, Russia is fantastic, Ukraine should pursue for peace and roll over.

Yes, yes, you never allowed downvoting so you’re used to just comment and that’s why there’s so many hexbears in here. And you’re definitely not Russian or CCP farmed trolls.

Yes, yes, all those things are true.

I’m sure I’m missing a few, but I’m pretty close to a hexbear “Bingo!” I think.

It’s worth saying, though, that Threads hasn’t joined the fediverse yet. They could be pulling an Apple, who committed to opening FaceTime and changed their mind. Let’s see.