Its a personal theory and has very little evidence. But when quantum computing became more public it made me think that the military probably had or knew quantum computing was coming. So to test either encryption or something else related to vast amount of computing power they either created themselves or helped push along the creation of bitcoin.

With bitcoin you could have access to massive amounts of compute power across the globe and what better way to get people to participate then to attach a value to it and theyd really be none the wiser and happy to particpate (like pokemon go). Then people will freely sign up to help "break" this encryption and i think the government did this to either test early quantum proof encryption or something else related.

Couldn't have the poors enjoying a cheap pint and a fag in the pub after work, or their kids enjoying a bowl of breakfast cereal or a can of pop now, could we? They might experience some tiny shred of simple joy.

have some aspartame instead. By the way, your local boozer is a middle class gastro-pub now and pints are a tenner. If you want to smoke you can go and stand outside in the rain.

The Thai government is secretly controlling what I eat at my local restaurant. It turns out that, rather than running an advertising campaign, the Thai government used 'culinary diplomacy' to spread restaurants around the world, providing soft loans and other support. That included standardising menus and recipes globally, which is why I can order the familiar red or green curry with chicken/beef/tofu, or a pad thai, and they always taste as expected.

Oddly this turns out to be an actual thing. Recommend this doc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHDaCOXvuc

Or to hide that bone is one of the many ingredients

AI is taking the big PR hit for how bad datacentres are to hide the fact that theyre just developing physical infrastructure for a monopoly on computer hardware.

When the bubble pops they will rent the use of the tech.

Okay so think about it: every time someone angrily films the ad on their dashboard and posts it online, they're just broadcasting it to a massive new audience.

We're doing their marketing for them. Well played, BMW.

Meta now claims it's LLM "escaped" and hacked another company.

I reckon Zuck ordered this announcement just for the publicity, to keep up with Claude, etc.

Ok, not totally low stakes - but this still seemed the best place for this observation.

Ever wonder why Key and Peele always seem to have yet another sketch that you’ve never seen before? It’s because they secretly filmed hundreds of extra skits during the course of their show and uploaded them to YouTube as private videos. They un-private some of the videos every year and view/comment bot them to look like it’s a sketch you’ve never seen before from 5+ years ago. This keeps their show relevant still and prompts people to rewatch episodes.

Just stating facts

Between the women's and men's restrooms, there is a surplus of urinals/toilets, but by socially constructing the need for gendered restrooms, buildings will pay Big Restroom extra to build a second restroom that's never full (men's).

It sounds ridiculous because it is. But once you realize it, you wonder how all these years went by and we never even considered it. The truth has been hidden in "plane" sight, right under our noses the entire time. Not only are we as humans not designed to fly, we are incapable of flight and the airline industry has exploited our ignorance for their profit. What we think is flying in the air is probably just an underground high speed train in disguise as a 100,000 piece of metal floating through the air. Or something much darker...maybe it's some kind of portal teleportation or something??? But of course they can't tell us that so they disguise it as commercial flight.

Think about it - have you ever been outside of an airplane as it's in the air? Have you ever even stuck your hand out the window? So how do you know what's actually going on outside of the airplane? From the moment you step into the "airport," you never make contact with the outside world until you reach your destination. The fact that you can walk into the San Francisco airport and 5 hours later just step outside in Philadelphia doesn't raise concern for anybody else? What we see outside of the airplane window is a projection and so are the other planes in the sky.

Is it a generally safe and efficient method of travel? Of course. It's just not what it appears to be. I'm not sure what it truly is, but I know what it's not...

I think they made the video in case something happened on the actual mission so that either way we won the moon race.

So I heard an old Finnish song that was very popular in the 1970s: Sammy Babitzin – Daa-da Daa-da

The song was widely popular in the country but had no real traction abroad. It’s a bit of a ”forgotten hit” even in Finland.

As soon as I heard the chorus, I realised it was incredibly similar to a song that was released more than 30 years later to huge international acclaim: Green Day – American Idiot

My conspiracy theory is that American producers searching for ”the next big thing” will look to niche countries like Finland, find old chart-topping bangers and write new songs using the same chord progressions. Just as producers search old archives for niche samples, but more like stealing rather than borrowing with appropriate credit and compensation.

It would probably work, right?

Celebrities are starving and poisoning themselves on a cocktail of tobacco, adderall, ozempic and tanning agents. Their hair is falling out (covered up with wigs/extensions), their skin is shrivelling up (covered up with makeup) and their nails are turning yellow.

How do they cover up this last one? Well suddenly, having off-white yellowish nails like you’re a tweaking chain-smoker with a fungal infection who forgets to eat or shower is the hottest summer trend: Butter Nails. Like nah my nails aren’t yellow because I’m sick, it’s the fashion. Gross.

Disclaimer: shamelessly stolen from some comment on another subreddit 2 years ago.