I once had one of those crypto-people message me with a sales pitch, asking for money to help start their small business in Africa or something like that (can’t remember what, I think it was a micro-brewery)
As an actual business owner, their initial ideas sounded okay, and I began forwarding them resources on how to secure a low-interest loan from their government and grants and stuff like that and then they abruptly closed up with:
“This is scam, brother. This is scam. You have good heart. I tell you only once, do not message this number.”
We forget that on the other end of scams are real people with real problems, morals, and lives. The person on the other end of your scam probably started to feel bad and helped you out. And likely that person is being forced into performing these scams on people.
There’s an excellent “Search Engine” podcast episode about this that came out recently called “Who’s behind these scammy text messages we’ve all been getting.” It’s well worth a listen because it dives into all the slavery and human trafficking involved in modern scams that people aren’t aware of.
The especially vile thing about these scam centers is that often they trick normal people just trying to find work and support their family. They steal their passport and then hold them hostage with slave labour.
I once mentioned “the joys of torrenting” to a friend and they immediately assumed piracy. I mean he wasn’t wrong, but the lack of love for more standard use of P2P is saddening.
Steam can do that now but first gotta enable it for friends. Works great for multiple computers on a slower internet connection. One downloads it then shares to the rest.
It’s like the difference between “my shit”, “your shit”, and “that shit”. You’re not actually referring to your own things as feces, or calling it “shitty”. It’s just your shit. As in “Don’t touch my shit”. But when you’re referring to someone else’s shit as “your shit” or “that shit” it’s more derogatory. Like, “clean up that shit” or “get your shit out of here”.
The context changes “shit” from derogatory to neutral. Similarly, “dude” can be both gender specific and neutral depending on context.
Note that people are still allowed to prefer not to be referred to as “dude”, but it’s a gender neutral term in many contexts nonetheless.
In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it’s possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
Ive generally always agreed with the former comment, but I’ve heard this argument a few times and it does demonstrate the disconnect well. I’ve switched it up to a simple y’all.
You’re literally arguing that this word should specifically exclude women, while complaining that double meanings never include women. It makes no sense. Why wouldn’t you want to take power over the word to make it apply to women too?
Of course. No one literally thinks that “dude” always means man.
The issue isn’t the obvious truth of the different meanings. The issue is that those different meanings aren’t neutral like they claim to be, because they rely on the idea of men being the “default” state of people.
There’s a reason there isn’t exactly a large number of words in use that can men “woman” and “everybody” and that’s because most men would be uncomfortable with that.
Of course. No one literally thinks that “dude” always means man.
Your points in this thread are certainly implying that “dude” is always a man. When you say “if a word is either neutral or masc, then it’s not neutral”, then you’re literally saying it always is masc.
The issue is that those different meanings aren’t neutral like they claim to be
So, neutrality is a spectrum? How do you define the different parts of the neutrality spectrum?
because they rely on the idea of men being the “default” state of people.
That’s a claim that needs some data to back up.
because most men would be uncomfortable with that. Yet somehow, the opposite is fine?
I don’t give a single shit about what they think. Why should anyone?
I don’t give a single shit about what they think. Why should anyone?
I mean, clearly you do. If you didn’t give a shit, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
And just like you, enough people “give a shit” about man being a stand in for the default human, that despite literally thousands and years of language development not a single case of “woman as the default” has entered common usage.
“Queen” by itself refers to either women or gay men. It is not gender neutral. “Drama queen” is applied to all genders, but, again, this example is pejorative toward women. Do you have any examples of women-centric language that can refer to all genders, but that is not negative toward women?
I think we would need to clarify on what your definition of gender neutral is before continuing. I would consider it gender neutral because I and the people I hang around would use the term with a person regardless of their gender. Maybe that’s exclusive to us but also you defined more than one gender that can be described by the term so a looser definition of gender neutral would still apply. Women and men (even though they are gay) are very clearly two different genders.
As a former resident of San Diego I have no problem sleeping with dudes. Because everyone is dude.
People think they’re clever when they ask “would you sleep with the dude?” My response is " bold of you to assume that I haven’t." Everyone is dude. You can try to twist things as much as you like but dude normalization reigns supreme.
I was talking about the default assumptions people make when they hear the word. Your circumstances don’t come in to it, unless your claim is that most people share your experiences
In San Diego the default assumption of “dude” is that it can be literally anyone or any thing.
The people there accepted this decades ago. It’s not one person’s experience. It’s a shared experience of millions. It’s a geographically specific situation with the Smurf language phenomenon. Any noun can be Smurf and everyone there understands the smurfing meaning when it’s smurfing said.
If they have the corral I put it in the corral. If not I will bring it back to the store or try to avoid taking it to my car in the first place so I can leave it at the store and not come back.
The key is to return the cart to a designated location where the store is asking that they be returned.
Disco Elysium is a fantastic one. There are an insane amount of choices that shape how you go about the investigation of the hanged man and ultimately what happens beyond that investigation. Choices of who to side with, how to side (openly or playing multiple sides, etc.), choices that ultimately define what kind of detective you are (by-the-book boring, superstar douchebag, violent tough guy, Sherlock Holmes-esque genius, etc., including my favorite: Twin Peaks Lynchian detective that bases their decisions off of dreams, intuition and imaginary conversations with the dead body), and even how failing or succeeding at something can lead to progress in very different ways. If you fail to hit that person you tried to punch, or miss that shot with your gun, or utterly fail to convince someone to help you, you progress through in very different ways so that failing your way to the truth is just as satisfying and entertaining as succeeding your checks to get there.
And of course Fallout: New Vegas. Whether you choose to support the New California Republic, Caesar’s Legion, Mr. House, or a truly independent New Vegas, none of them are perfect. Each succeeds in an ideal society in some ways but completely fails at others, leaving you to decide which imperfect system you feel is the right one for the world instead of shoving an obvious answer in your face.
Who’d have guessed that volunteers without big bags of cash usually only actually have one or two actual servers running and they somehow can’t afford a whole fleet of failover servers for when traffic gets too high.
I literally remember when sites like Reddit, Amazon, and even Google went down. We’re so used to crazy uptimes that it’s easy to forget that real servers and infrastructure have real problems.
Actually, I’m more used to the big sites going down, than small ones, but considering the fact that they are well-fed to come back online, compared to volunteer projects, just gave me some concerns
I was taught in school the characteristics of authoritarianism and a couple weeks later, when i was being taught about communism, the same characteristics were said
Going a step further, the idea of authoritarian. Every ideology with a state relies on some type of authority to function, as a term it is an attempt at equating fascism and communism and serves as holocaust trivialization.
But a very easy time naming democratic communists. Even Stalin wasn’t a dictator, according to liberal historians such as Conquest who are experts on the soviet union. Socialism is more democratic than capitalism.
You’re right that they’re absolutely not the same, however at a nation state level, I’d be very surprised if you could point to any communist regime at any point in history that wasn’t also authoritarian or didn’t end up that way
Because stocks kept trading at higher and higher P/E ratios essentially saying “the market thinks this company can make much more money in the future than they are making now.”
The problem is, most companies couldn’t, and as we have hit a recessionary phase those companies are now scrambling to try to show continued growth justifying their price.
The way they do that is by cutting off their limbs and selling them for short term cash at long term consequence.
So you see them cutting costs in all kinds of ways that screw over their customers but can show quarterly profits. Even though it means customers may not stay customers if better options appear.
So we are in this sort of pendulum swing period where large corporations suck because there’s effectively no competition that doesn’t and sucking is the last way for them to squeeze water from a stone. The natural solution is that we’d see competition rise up that doesn’t suck to take their customers away and force pro-customer changes.
This likely will eventually happen, but it’s going to take time. There are emerging tech trends that will accelerate it, but are still a few years away from practically changing the equation.
In about a decade things should suck less, and a number of the crappy companies around right now may no longer be around, but in the meantime it’s still going to suck for a while yet as things adjust to the dying of the old guard and birth of the new.
I don’t really agree with this. It is the answer that I think classical economics would give but I just don’t think it’s useful. For one, it ignores politics. Large corporations also have bought our government, and a few large wealth management funds like vanguard own a de facto controlling share in many public companies, oftentimes including virtually an entire industry, such that competition between them isn’t really incentived as much as financial shenanigans and other Jack Welch style shit.
Some scholars (i think I read this in Adrienne bullers value of a whale, which is basically basis for this entire comment) even argue that we’ve reached a point where it might be more useful to think of our economy as a planned economy, but planned by finance instead of a state central authority.
All that is to say: why would we expect competition to grow, as you suggest, when the current companies already won, and therefore have the power to crush competition? They’ve already dismantled so many of the antimonopoly and other regulations standing in their way. The classical economics argument treats these new better companies as just sorta rising out of the aether but in reality there’s a whole political context that is probably worth considering.
Good point well made. I think it’s usually naive wishful thinking (for a “just world” that makes sense and is going to be OK, actually) that allows a liberal capitalist apologist to point to classical economics and say “see the companies are hurting,” but the companies don’t have feelings, and the owners and shareholders are feeling just fine.
I woukd say it’s even worse than that: Free Market only works if humans behaved in a certain way (the so called homo economicus) which has long be disproven by Behavioural Economics and in Markets with low barriers to entry (i.e. teddy bears or soap, not railways or internet service provision) and even then it can’t deal will systemic problems (basically any Negative Externality such as Polution or Greenhouse Gas emissions, or over consumption of share resources - a.k.a. Tragedy of the Commons - such as with overfishing or in depletion of mineral resources).
People have been fed by politicians and think-tanks with shaddy funding an oversimplified theory that sounds amazing if you do not at all dig into the details, whilst not actually working in reality, not even close, but of course you’re never be told that by the people who win the most from the system built on top of this theory.
(It’s actually funny how this is the Capitalist mirror of Communism: beautiful high-level theory, never worked and can’t work in practice - because people are as they are, the physical world is as it is and human systems work as they work - and the people whose priviledges come from the system created to implement said theories will never ever tell you they don’t work and never will even after a half a century experiment: in fact they’ll just tell you it’s only not working as expected because it has not been done with enough “purity” and hence we need to double-down to make it work)
I disagree on your expectations for improvement, though agree on the rest.
There are lots of markets with natural barriers to entry were there isn’t any realistic chance for a new competitor to arrise and even if one did thanks to, say, some new technology, they’ll almost certainly only “disrupt” until they became well established and then do the same as all the rest because that maximizes profitability (just look at Uber a decade ago and look at Uber now).
Then there are lots of markets were crooked politcians (which nowadys seems to be most of the ones in the mainstream parties) make sure there are artificial barriers to entry so that well-connected companies are protected from competition - pretty much any market were an operating license is required, such as Banking and Mobile works like that - and that too means no costumer-friendly competitors will arrise in such markets, ever, because the gatekeeping which is in the hands of said crooked politians stops them before they even start, and said political gatekeepers couldn’t care less about consumer-friendliness of market participants and they’ll only change their ways if forced to politically and that’s not going to happen in countries with voting systems designed to maintain a political duopoly such as the US were the politicians rarelly fear losing their positions, especially on complex hard to explain things like how consumers suffer from them “maintaing high artifical market barriers to entry”
In the old days, before neoliberalism got entrenched, you might have such natural or artificial monopoly or cartel markets occupied by a Public company, which due to the lack of competition quickly grew inneficient (in my professional experience the same happens in Private companies in such a situation, by the way), though cheap, and on which there was often political pressure to improve. Now you have them occupied by Private companies who are driven solely by profit-seeking, so it’s still shit (because they cut costs) only it’s also expensive for customers rather than cheap (because they try to squeeze costumers with high prices) and suffers zero political pressure because the politicians hide behind the “It’s a Free Market” to refuse to regulate whilst secretly waiting for their Non-executive board memberships as rewards for being “friends of business” - a wonderful example of all this are Railways in the UK.
Hey, I’m all for killing every god, but if your vote at the federal level doesn’t count and the cops are all violent bigots from the next county over, wtf else are you supposed to champion? A living fucking wage? Body autonomy? Simply NOT being a rounding error in one more billionaire’s financial report? Plant your flag wherever you need to, but I say again: Fuck AMP.
We’re on the same page here, but you have to be realistic. The amount of people who still don’t know where to find the any-key on their laptop, is staggering. I have little hope that the masses will ignore amp or even be consious about the existence of amp. I’m affraid amp will remain unless google decides it is done with amp.
However, other in this threat have mentioned that google might in fact be considering abandoning amp. So there is a ray of sunshine in the otherwise dark and hopeless outlook of the future
AMP sites were enough to make me change the default search engine on my iPhone and I'm a very lazy person.
The good news is that Google is deprecating AMP now - or at least, its no longer a requirement for getting a 'Top Stories' place in search results - so I'm hoping we see it wither as sites no longer field compelled to use it
I hate amp so much that once iOS supported safari extensions I bought the Amplosion extension (from the dev of the Reddit Apollo app). There were constant scrolling and zoom issues for me any time I loaded an amp page, fuck amp.
Through easy access to education, societal support, and a safety net.
There are many parents out there who were able to break the cycle of trauma and raise children in positive environments. But almost every single one of them talks about how they had the privilege of the support of friends, therapists, teachers, obs/gyn doctors, whatever, to help break the patterns
There’s a reason “It takes a village to raise a child” is an idea that is prevalent across so many cultures. The concept of the nuclear family was a tool to sell more real estate, and we are seeing the consequences of that societal shift today.
While there is evidence of nuclear families existing as far as 5 000 years ago, they were only really for wealthy/high status people. The concept of the nuclear family as it’s own autonomous unit wasn’t really widely financially viable until post-Industrial revolution.
There is even current academic arguments that the previously believed idea that Europe had moved to nuclear families as early as the 17th century may be flawed, as the surviving literature was once again biased towards the merchant/upper classes.
I’d say the evidence is in the fact you can find nuclear families in animal species other than humans. Birds and possums didn’t learn that from their wealthy human neighbors. It’s normal for two parents to take care of their young and create a home together. It’s been going on way longer than whatever capitalist marketing campaign you think it came from.
I don’t think you understand what the term “nuclear family” means in a sociological manner. In humans it’s not just “two parents taking care of their offspring”, there is also a caveat that they are doing that WITHOUT the reliance of an extended social group. Then those offspring are expected to do the same once they reach adulthood. The only social support they are expected to have is their own unit.
Furthermore, comparing human behaviours to other species such as birds (who flock together in habitats for survival and for migration) and possums (who are a solitary, nocturnal species) doesn’t really mean anything.
The comparisons should be to species who share similar evolutionary patterns and social habits to humans ie. primates. And across every primate species, whether it be lemurs, gorillas, baboons, simians, etc. they are all connected to a LARGER SOCIAL GROUP irrespective of their family structure (pairs, group family, homogeneous male or female) well into adulthood.
It also helps provide a social standard that anyone can relate to. Seems weird to demand that parents should be the ones solely responsible to make sure their children are able to socialize properly. That just means they're main reference for socializing is just their parents.
Considering the sheer amount of time people spend in schools during essentially all of their formative years, it’d be a terrible idea not to implement legislation that could prevent maladaptive behaviors in our populace. Schools are already affected by legislation via the Mindless Drone Initiative established by our industrial forefathers. We might as well update things to make it a Healthy Human Endeavor instead. Finger-wagging at imaginary parents is going to do fuck all by comparison.
Possibly. How about the reality that people are simply not interacting in person but online. I can’t believe this is not the first post.
Seriously go out to a bar, a music festival, volunteer, hell get drunk a few times and loosen up. In the 70, 80, 90 right up till 2000 this was every weekend. Hell it is not some work drone thing. That is an excuse. Work later in life is where you actually might meet some friends and from there have drinks after work and maybe that results in a random meeting with some ladies or men in your life.
School won’t teach this. Life skills need practice not exams.
Seriously go out to a bar, a music festival, volunteer, hell get drunk
As a non-drinker I find it interesting that 2 out of these 3 things require the use of a drug. (Yes I know, you can order water at bars, but I doubt that was the point of that statement.)
Think you need to get out more. Few people bat an eye if you don’t drink alcohol in a bar. Lots go for the music alone is it is a live band. It just some wings after work.
Never said anyone would confront you about it. I’m also with you, live music is different, but that’s not something I have seen much at bars where I’m from
Sorry but our parents worked more than us and their parents worked more then them. Few people I know work weekends or don’t get two days a week off. Your parents worked normal 8 hours day then they went home and worked on their cars and houses and basically did another 4 hours a day doing of jobs. Their parents went one step further and built their own houses often or helped build them and grew alot of their own food.
We might work similar or more formal hours but we work far less informal hours that at any period in history. So that does not hold much water to me.
This is only true of certain segments of the working class, mainly the white collar workers located in Western countries. As we see wealth inequality increase globally, I don’t think it’s fair to say every single person is working less.
Also legality aside, kids generally don’t have money to go to bars, restaurants, or music festivals.
This is not true actually. There was a miss-interpreted study that calculated a lower average in working hours but that was because they didn’t consider that many women work part-time. Which lowered the average working hours.
When you look at households, though, the number of working hours is much higher. And that does have an influence.
I am an older person and I can still remember that my mother organised all social occasions of our family. We had big family gatherings regularly, coffee and cake every Sunday, activities in the local community and at schools, etc. This was all organised by the women who did not have jobs. Who is supposed to do all this today?
Also, great parents still end up with perfectly shit children all the time.
People online just love playing the blame game on others for an individuals actions though lmfao. Poor upbringing, neglect, trauma, all of that is only one part of explaining someone’s actions. It doesn’t remove the responsibility and free will of the person commiting them lol.
The influence of parenting is extremely overestimated. I think that is also a symptom of a society where people are reluctant to take on responsibility for themselves. Which is also a reason why people lack community because both (responsibility for oneself and functioning relationships) rely on introspection.
I dunno…distractions, too much commitment, feels indulgent,… ? Just got a book for my birthday and read the first 100 pages aloud in the car because my husband and son wanted to hear it. Now it’s been on my coffee table for two weeks and I’m struggling to pick it back up.
It’s not really indulgent to take some time for yourself. Maybe your also missing the right book to get you interested. What kind of story are you interested in?
When i was younger (before kids) i read a lot - mostly Stephen King and classics and it’s still what i really like. Kids are grown, but i have a hard time saying, “I’m going to sit here for an hour and read.” There’s always something to do…bills, husband, animals, house, yard, etc. and when i veg I mostly turn to mindlessly browsing my phone because it’s 2 minute chunks that you can put down anytime. After 15 years of working at the same job i just found out that my lunch break is 60 minutes instead of 30 - maybe I’ll bring a book and try to use that time to read.
My method is very simple, just looking for people who sit and read in trains, cafés, etc., most people who do that tend to be people who like to read books.
The trick is to read something that’s fictional and less dry. Fantasy would be an excellent choice. Sci Fi if you still enjoy things slightly more grounded in reality.
And that financial industry bled into the other industries, and started stealing the credit.
Musk is a good example. The perfect one, really. True engineers and scientists could be the figureheads of those companies, but when you think Space X, you think of that wart of a human being.
Edison was a shithead with his company and his money, but he was still the genuine article when it came to engineering. More than can be said for Musk.
Obviously too late now, but the move to Austin would have taken a long time, had you thought of accepting the move and in the meantime starting an intense job search in Maryland? That way if you found nothing you at least still had a backup plan in Austin and you weren’t fully out of the job.
Agreed. OP, I’m sorry this has happened to you. I wish you the best.
For others in the future, a crappy 1 room “extended stay” hotel might cost more for housing temporarily, but would likely be more money in your pocket at the end of the month than unemployment. Getting a job is much easier if you have a job already.
Do you guys and the people who upvoted you not have friends and family? I’m baffled by the nonchalant suggestion that someone pick up their life and move across the country thousands of miles from anyone they know, on what is more or less the whims of strangers.
Fly down to Austin, rent a PO Box, have mail diverted back to current house, claim you moved and wait till company notices while looking for a new job.
There are mail services in Texas that give you a street address and will forward the mail to whatever address you choose. No flying needed.
Someone I know keeps residency while spending his year moving from place to place. He doesn’t have a real home and never spends more than a few months in one place so it gives him a place to register his vehicle and keep his driver’s license up to date.
They’re suggesting a temporary move until a new job is sorted, if I understand. While not feasible for everyone, it could be an option for some to avoid being laid off.
First, I wasn’t suggesting it as a permanent move. You live in the other place until you find a job back in your original location, but all the while you’d still have a job, income, and most importantly, health insurance.
Do you guys and the people who upvoted you not have friends and family?
Multiple times during my childhood one of my parents had to move ahead to a different city to take a job while the other parent stayed in the original place until the end of the school year and we’d move.
I’m baffled by the nonchalant suggestion that someone pick up their life and move across the country thousands of miles from anyone they know, on what is more or less the whims of strangers.
You do what you have to do to make ends meet. When there is no easy way you do the hard thing because thats what being an adult is.
Yeah. More people need to be comfortable gaming the system like this. They do it to us so there’s no reason not to do it right back (but double check your contracts!)
It’s totally replaced reddit for me. Every community I’m interested is smaller than I’m used to, but much more positive. It’s cool even seeing a lot of the same names occasionally as I navigate around the site.
I hope it keeps this level of quality as it grows.
That can also be regulated to a certain extent at the Federation/instance level so its very possible to have different conventions or varying levels of quality control for posting and commenting
What’s really cool is seeing actual conversations taking place. I’m actually able to comment here and I’m not immediately being drowned out by being one of ten thousand comments or constant contrarian trolling.
It has also totally replaced Reddit for me. It reminds me a lot of the old internet and a bit of early Reddit. It’s a really cool experiment, and if it continues as-is I will be thrilled, and if not then I will forever have a sense of pride of what everyone here accomplished. It’s very cool.
Yeah, I never feel like I’m commenting/posting into the void. By my surprise, it has actually encouraged me to post more, which isn’t something I expected when I joined Lemmy, and definitely not something I ever did on reddit.
Haha, I’m glad! I know I post a lot of memes in general, but Risa is by far my favorite community on lemmy. The more people that get into Star Trek, the better, I say!
I’ve always been such an admirer and peruser of such a classic and timeless dialectical format. Its like constantly examining knowledge and each other and being likewise cross-examined in all the best ways
I honestly believe it has made me a much better writer and thinker although I have no pretensions about how systematic any of it is.
Edit: it can compel me to be hilariously nitpicky sometimes
Anything that makes you think critically, ponder, analyse, or absorb knowledge is a grand thing.
I just had an idea: daily Lemmy debates. We pick a topic that is relevant to the day, and we engage in healthy, respectful debate, picking a side and exploring that stance until all points of logic are exhausted.
Great idea. I also really liked Reddits’s KarmaCourt or whatever with the roles for Judge, prosecutor, defense, other officers of the “Court”, and jury etc. I love shit like that, its like the internet’s version of HarveyBirdman Attorney at Law. Oh, and SubredditSimulator is goddamn hilarious.
I really do hope Lemmy can become sufficiently populous to allow for revitalizing all the niche subreddits and perpetuate+encourage that knowledge dissemination and truth-seeking function that Reddit (the community of communities rather than RedditCo) tends to do stunningly well.
I made one of my favorite niche communities (on my Lemmy.world account), for the XCOM games. And I try to drop memes in a few other super niche communities that I’m interested in every so often.
Growth is slow, but a handful of very active users can contribute more than you’d think.
Just be careful. There’s some bad hombres out there spamming bad stuff and I don’t want any nice volunteers getting burned online or offline, if you catch my drift.
Its insane how responsive and quick rhe answers pile up, asklemmy is the shit. Just asked a life or death question and already got lke r organic answers
I post and comment a lot, and it frequently leads to me having like 40-50 messages in my inbox if I don’t check for a few hours. I’ve even noticed a significant uptick lately, which is encouraging.
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