Well done. I'm like most people in that I didn't spot it until he started talking about a subject I knew about. The first Tesla Roadster looked amazing^1^, and then the hyperloop sounded like a cool idea^2^, and then oh wait what's he saying about software development now?

^1^ because its body was made by Lotus

^2^ except it doesn't work

The giant jpeg square artefact on the side of Homer's head in the first frame undermines the message somewhat.

I wish there were some internationally recognized symbols to represent languages as distinct entities from their countries of origin, but the idea of trying to make some seems really unpopular for some reason.

There's other languages that have far more politically contentious flags representing them - at least all the English-speaking countries are broadly allies. Spare a thought for the Taiwanese who have to select a People's Republic of China flag, even though the language is as much theirs as it is the PRC's, or the large number of Russian-speaking native Ukrainians who have to select the flag of the country who's bombing them and their families.

The notion of a country owning a language is fraught with toxicity (indeed, Russia's claim to vast swathes of Ukraine leans heavily on it), and if languages had their own flags we could sidestep the whole issue.

Yup. I once decided to spend an afternoon answering questions on a framework I was expert in, as a kind of profile-building exercise to help with job hunting, and after around the third smug self-satisfied comment picking me up on some piece of irrelevant bullshit I deleted my account.

Also literally any day could be the one the Bomb dropped. It's easy to forget how close we came, or how fucking terrifying it was that you had no way of knowing.

Are you trying to get rickrolled?

It sounds ridiculous now with everything that's happened in social media in the meantime, but I can see that being a thing in 2006 when the vibe of social media was very different to what it's become now. Back then it was just a tidy little PHP site for you to chat and share photos with friends and family on. Literally nothing appeared in your feed that wasn't a post from a Friend. It was basically a Whatsapp group with a photo gallery feature.

Since Facebook didn't have the baggage it has now, it's much easier to read refusing to join your girlfriend's circle of friends and family back then as a wider rejection of her as a person, same as if you refused to join her family Whatsapp/Telegram/whatever group chat.

I'm not taking her side here, but I wanted to give a bit of perspective for people looking at it through the lens of 2025.

Yeah this is 2025, you can't just say something overtly dumb and expect people to understand it was a joke.

Yeah I used to think that all these Tesla fan channels on YouTube and Instagram were because the brand was seen as somehow special and exciting, like Apple used to be under Steve Jobs. But now I've come to the conclusion that most of them are being paid under the table and not declaring it, because their collective reactions to the past year or more of insanity just don't pass the sniff test.

apologies for the pixels, I stole it from reddit

You have my sympathies, but that still doesn't mean you get to post complete nonsensical garbage where a glass of water is talking for no reason, that took you less effort to create than it did to read, and expect people to not tell you to jog on, when there's a whole wealth of creative artists out there who are putting in the energy but getting their space flooded with slop.

The web has objectively become much, much worse in the past 12 months because quality is getting drowned out by quantity.

It wasn't until all this kicked off that I learned just how many companies that I thought were European were in fact owned by American conglomerates.

Which makes MAGA's "the world is taking advantage of America" rhetoric all the more infuriatingly hypocritical. You spent decades using the strong dollar to go on a massive global shopping trip buying up every other country's companies, and are now crying foul that those companies you own are supplying their local markets instead of importing from the US?