A repack is usually a cracked release from another source that has been heavily compressed to reduce file size. They often come with a custom installer that manages the decompression process and streamlines the installation process, so you don’t have to manually install patches/cracks after installation, and can skip optional content. Trusted repackers like FitGirl will also check for malware/viruses in the original crack, so you can be reasonably confident the repack is safe to install. Having said that, always take your own precautions when installing anything from the internet, i.e. virus scan and only use trusted sources.
Also, due to the heavy compression, they take longer to install than normal releases, since it takes processing power to decompress the files. If you have a fast internet connection but a slow PC, theoretically it could be faster to avoid the repack.
It does feel a little dead here. Right now it’s mostly memes, meta discussions, or Reddit hate. And the crowd is a very specific type of hyper aware internet dweller (myself included).
Reddit isn’t worth using without third party apps, and it’s the only social media I used before Lemmy, so I’m spending a lot more time off my phone nowadays. I only check the daily top on Lemmy once a day instead of compulsively every time I touch my phone. Guess that’s a good thing.
I disagree. While I do like that the discussions and top level comments are not nearly as homogenized as Reddit eventually became, I’m really missing the niche communities. I wasn’t subscribed to any large subs on Reddit, so my feed was basically just a curated list of discussions for my hobbies. No memes, news, pop culture, internet drama, or politics. Right now, that’s just not possible on Lemmy due to the low population.
Give it time. Lemmy is still very fresh, but I’m confident smaller niche communities will keep popping up and it will eventually add up. Region and country locales seems to be doing well.
Exactly. What I feel we might be suffering from is the status quo. We‘re so used to being in walled gardens that we assume homogeneity. But this will not be the case if there are thousands of instances. You then might have an instance that is manga themed or retro themed and so on with themed versions of the other places etc. sounds like fun to me.
But the bottom line is that we need critical mass for this since that ensures visibility.
Yeah, the lack of many of my favorite niche communities makes me constantly wonder if I should just “suck it up” and go back to Reddit. I miss so many of them. If I wanna discuss a particular TV show or video game, often I just don’t have much of an option here, cause the community specific to that TV show or game is very likely dead.
We also don’t yet have many interesting text post subs that I liked to read on Reddit, like AITA, Best of Legal Advice, Best of Redditor Updates, Hobby Drama, etc.
Similarly, my local city sub is pretty dead (and never shows up on the front page cause the sorting algorithms suck). So I barely have any local interaction anymore! I met real life people on Reddit and it was great for getting advice from others who live in my city.
I’ve had the same thought, but sucking it up would mean using the official Reddit app or old Reddit on my phone/tablet (at least until they kill that, too), which are both just too annoying of an experience to be worth it to me. It’s not a principle thing, it’s a usability thing.
For the time being, I’ve just accepted that it’s gone and I’ll miss it for a good while. I’ve been browsing some old school forums for my random hobbies (Gear Page, Hard Forum, Steam, Fresh Loaf etc.), but otherwise, I’ve found other things to occupy my down time until either Lemmy’s smaller communities take off or something else fills the anonymous-niche-hobby-social-media void. Got me some cool books and Picross on Switch.
I’m fairly sure Reddit has something similar so users don’t keep seeing the same one popular community again and again.
For context, Reddit used to (5 years ago?) show multiple posts from the same community on /r/all, then they implemented a unique function that made it so only one post per sub was shown in the top X. This greatly improved /r/all. It was controversial and well documented.
It was weird at first but it really helped engagement and medium sized communities. I think if that PR makes it it would greatly improve Lemmy too.
I blocked the major meme subs (coms?) and my experience here has been much, much better. Free yourself of last year’s memes and explore all the interesting links getting posted
Yes, those meme communities are very active and drown other posts from other communities. Unsubscribing them drastically improve my experience. I can sort by New now and see Posts from communities I subscribed to. And unlike Reddit, new posts got pretty good engagements here, perhaps because other people browse by New too.
It would be nice if you could block a community directly from the front page without having to navigate to it first. Whole instances would also be useful.
The sorting algorithm fixes can’t come soon enough IMO. Small subs are dead because they simply can’t show up on the front page with most of the sorting algorithms that Lemmy has. That limits how much you’ll see in your feed and also makes Reddit a better product (due to all the niche subs it has that actually show up on the front page).
The one I use - memmy - frequently has issues with widgets that stop responding, and currently is glitching such that the upvote/downvote buttons are superimposed over the posts. Search results show all communities as having 3k subscribers even if there’s actually only single digits. If you highlight text to make a link, it overwrites the text with the empty link rather than making the text into a link. Mlem and Liftoff - the other two I checked - have their own issues.
I think we can also do a better job hiding the complexity of federations from novice users and cut down on the impact of bot-based crossposting by detecting that the lines articles are identical. I could see, for instance, discussions being merged on the client side.
I found reddit neither usable nor interesting before Alien Blue, and I suspect there are a number of potential users out there who would onboard or increase engagement here with a better UX.
Once 3rd party lemmy apps get up to snuff it’ll be easier to switch. The .ml loss probably hurt us and for now a lot of redditors would rather complain than leave.
I’m sorry, I have to disagree. While I understand that the novel can have multiple interpretations, what speaks to me most is the concept of “society” itself being the monster in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
Consider Victor Frankenstein, whose pursuit of knowledge alienates him from the society that should nurture scientific curiosity. He describes his isolation, saying, “I had worked hard for nearly two years…but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Chapter 5) The societal norms that make Frankenstein’s endeavors “forbidden” and “unearthly” indirectly contribute to his downfall.
Now, let’s think about the creature. Born innocent, its transformation into a destructive entity is catalyzed by societal rejection. The creature’s interaction with the De Lacey family highlights society’s instinctive fear of physical difference. The blind De Lacey is kind to the creature, demonstrating that without the bias of sight, acceptance is possible. But when his sighted family members encounter the creature, they react with fear and violence.
Rejection after rejection, the creature finally voices its anguish: “I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?” (Chapter 17) This lament encapsulates how societal prejudice and rejection can breed monstrosity.
In reading the novel, I see the destructive power of societal norms and prejudice, where both Victor and his creature, misunderstood and ostracized, spiral into destructive paths. To me, society’s inability to accept, understand, and empathize is what manifests the true monster in “Frankenstein.”
Perhaps it’s just my own personal experiences with society, feeling like an outcast, or at least not fitting into social norms, coming through in how I interpret the novel. However, I strongly believe that Mary Shelley’s work invites us to question who the real monster is, and I find society’s role in shaping the narrative impossible to ignore.
See for me it’s not so much the rejection of science itself as the fact that he was trying to play God and the creature was a reflection of that. There might even be a metaphor in there somewhere regarding original sin and God’s rejection of man. He creates this thing then abandons it because it’s not perfect. Had he an ounce of love things would’ve turned out differently.
That’s a really fascinating perspective, it’s definitely set my mind spinning. I reckon our theories might actually mesh together in a way.
Consider why Victor felt the need to abandon his creation. Was it not in part due to his dread of society’s judgement, which, in turn, highlights the destructive influence society can wield?
And regarding the aspiration to ‘play God,’ could it possibly be an offshoot of societal pressures and expectations?
The novel is incredibly rich, and all too often, it’s overly simplified.
Great post OP, really an engaging discussion. (At least I think so)
He even dug up corpses to pursue this knowledge of creation. He chose to stick to outdated science even while professors and his father tried to show him new fields of science. He wasn’t pursuing science, he was pursuing an outdated model of knowledge.
Your version reminds me of Vonnegut’s that was something like this in an imagined conversation with Mary Shelly: “Dr. R - Does it bother you when people call the monster in the book ‘Frankenstein’? MS - Not really. There were two monsters in the book, after all, and one of them was named ‘Frankenstein.’”
Caveat emptor: the commas just insert pauses - there isn’t any sort of “synchronization” with the system on the other end, so if the timing is off, this may not do the right thing.
I downvote a lot of posts here because I don’t think they’re questions appropriate for this community. They’re either loaded questions, opinions, obvious bait, or asklemmy material.
If this community is supposed to be the Lemmy version of r/nostupidquestions, the questions should be things that you think should know but don’t. Things that might make you feel stupid asking.
A good question for this sub is “How often do I actually have to wash a hoodie?”
A bad question is “Why is [company] doing [something anti consumer]”
Well yeah, if you go around people. If you don’t know how to wash a hoodie, you’re probably not a social butterfly. I do know how to wash a hoodie and I’m not a social butterfly, so I can’t imagine what it’s like not knowing and still trying to speak to someone.
A similar problem would happen on r/ELI5 that drove me nuts. Originally the kinds of questions you were supposed to ask were things like “the origins of the Gulf war” or “the rules on how to play poker”. But instead there were too many questions that were like “what’s going on in my stomach when it growls”.
“Can someone explain [complicated geopolitical conflict] to me like I’m 5?” were my least favorite. At least pretend you tried to get the answer yourself
That’s how the sub started. Answers were broken down into the most basic of analogies, it was great. But like most big subs, the rules got lax and it lost what made it special.
In my opinion, stricter posting rules make for a better community…as long as they’re not arbitrary.
That might not be the best counter example. Now I’m interested in why exactly my stomach growls, and would probably need it explained in simple terms since I’m not a doctor.
Ah, I wasn’t familiar with the subreddit, so I was just taking it as a free for all, so no question is out of place. Especially as lemmy is smaller, and lacks enough traffic in niche communities, it makes sense to have a bigger community for just answering whatever comes to mind.
But obviously there’s issues with that, if the community was swamped it would make sense to have a stricter guideline.
Totally. I was just being descriptive not prescriptive. I wasn’t aware of the sub, and thought this was a fun lemmy thing, particularly suited to its smaller user base. And I’ve always associated asklemmy / askreddit with asking people’s opinions, wanting a broad range of answers.
Looking at the guidelines, there doesn’t seem to be any guidance about what kinds of questions beyond “ask away”. The rules are mostly about no trolling, NSFW, etc. So, my comment was giving the perspective of someone who didn’t associate the community with a reddit thing, and the message it’s giving off is “ask any question” and that seemed cool to me. But I have no problem at all with it being more specific than that, having explicit guidelines or just a culture of up/down certain types of questions. Community guidelines and specialisation are good! But with lemmy smaller user base more broad communities can also be good!
I think most people don’t like to see obviously leading/rhetorical questions, but I’m (personally) happy with seeing more abstract, whimsical, or interesting questions than just "stuff you feel like you should know but don’t ". Looking at the top posts in the community, there are some “what is wage theft/a sovereign citizens/etc” which seem to be the classic “everyone else seems to know something I don’t” situation. Then there’s a bunch of fediverse, corporation and tech industry opinion questions, which definitely do seem more like an asklemmy thing. But “can you live on pickles?” or “would nuclear weapons be useful in a space battle” are the kinda questions I think are fun and I generally enjoy reading the responses and learn something, but they’re not “stuffy you should be expected to know” (well, maybe the pickles answer is pretty obvious, but the reasoning isn’t necessarily…)
I used to know a guy whose cat had that name. He got a vet bill in the mail, literally addressed to said cat. The FIB showed up a few days later asking some pretty interesting questions.
Medicaid is the correct answer. Surprised more people aren’t mentioning it. It’s specifically in place to cover people with low incomes who often don’t have insurance through an employer.
Medicaid will often cover the cost of child birth for low-income people 100%.
That being said, if you have slightly higher income than allowed to enroll in Medicaid, your only option may be a long-term payment plan and lots of debt that you may carry for the rest of your life. It’s an awful system that really only benefits the strong.
Are you familiar enough with the details to share them? Because this sounds strange to me - every plan has an out of pocket maximum and the highest I’ve seen is $14k. Are you including premiums? Do the costs span multiple years?
I’m not American so maybe I’m getting something wrong… But aren’t you making a faulty assumption about people having a plan at all? Isn’t the amount of completely uninsured in the us in the double digits or something?
I always wonder what would of happened to my son if I wasn’t Canadian. He was not growing properly in the womb which meant many doctors appointments and ultrasounds . And then he was born 3 months premature and spent 3 months in the NICU. I didn’t have to pay a cent for any of it .
“I use Linux as my operating system,” I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. “Actually”, he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!’ I don’t miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "I use Alpine, a distro that doesn’t include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. It’s Linux, but it’s not GNU+Linux.
The smile quickly drops from the man’s face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams “I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT’S STILL GNU!” Coolly, I reply “If windows was compiled With gcc, would that make it GNU?” I interrupt his response with “-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even you were correct, you wont be for long.”
With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man’s life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I’ve womansplained him to death.
I wouldn’t recommend Arch to Linux beginners, though. It’ll take quite a bit of tinkering to get to work and you have to develop a pretty detailed understanding of the whole thing. Which is absolutely fine, of course, if this is what you want to do. But if you just want something that works with minimal hassle, try Mint.
Yes, I find this obsession with Arch on Lemmy very weird. It’s certainly not a distro for beginners. Ubuntu (let the hate flow), Mint, Fedora, and many others would be better choices.
If it is what you like, fair enough but I feel that it is encouraged around here as a default for both beginners and advanced users, which is bizarre. It’s too complex for beginners and not optimisable enough for very advanced users. I don’t hate it but I hate to see it become the standard.
Compared to gentoo for instance, packages are not compiled depending on the HW they are installed on. So, not enough resource optimisation and customisation for some users
Of course, any distro is customisable if you spend the time to do it voluntarily, but by default it’s not the way it works
I suppose, although you are getting very little performance improvements compiling from sources. Like very, very little. Considering that you will be waiting for emerge a lot, there’s a good handful of folks that consider it a net positive.
Absolutely, it used to be important, now it’s more of a hobby for me…
Yet, for some people who love to have everything under control, Arch is a step below the fully optimisable distros. That’s why I think it’s maybe not for the ultimate Linux extremists among us :) Although there is definitely some respect to give to people who completely mod Mint or Ubuntu, they’re among the bravest
I don’t know enough about Gentoo to understand what it is saying but it sounds like it is totally the same but makes dealing with the compiler options a lot easier? Do you think it’s a good first pick over Gentoo? For “advanced Linux” I mean not a first timer lol.
For very specific uses, it can be useful. Some scientific SW, niche applications, or if you have older HW. Most of the time, it’s a flex now (I use gentoo BTW, what about that?)
I used to use Arch Linux. It’s really good, honestly, especially if you want to know how the OS components work from inside or make something custom. For anything else, I would recommend Debian and its non-snap-based derivatives (Linux Mint Debian Edition or Tuxedo OS, or KDE Neon).
From my personal experience Arch is several months ahead of other distros and depending on the package and sometimes has everything you need already included for gaming.
I believe this is due to the Steam Deck.
However for ease of use, I agree there are other better distros. Fedora is only 2ish months behind arch in terms of graphics drivers and Ubuntu… has the latest proton from steam and lutris since proton isn’t installed from the local app stores.
Source for that? It’s one of those weird, wild affirmations that go around regarding Arch. Ahead in terms of what? Integrating the most up-to-date kernel or something?
Is it because of the rolling release model? But it’s not the only one to have rolling releases.
This comes from personal testing of games. There was a DX11 bug intel igpus where UE4 games crash instantly on boot. I was able to work around this by forcing dx12 in arch, but when I moved to fedora it wasn’t working, that was until about 2 months later after an update. Since I don’t know exactly how far behind fedora is in terms of graphics drivers I said it in ambiguous terms.
Yeah, I’m not sure supporting MS proprietary 3D rendering APIs is the goal of any Linux distro? It’s like saying: look my distro is ahead because excel runs on it. I might be missing the point here. If you can have the same reasoning with Vulkan, that would make sense tho
Have you not heard of the Steam Deck and Proton? Running MS APIs through a compatibility layer is the main goal for Linux gaming for the past few years, as it allows legacy games that had no hope in getting a Linux native port (or a terrible Linux port) to run in Linux, through the Proton Compatibility layer.
The apps I was using were running with DXVK, but due to a bug with intel iGPU driver which affects both Windows and Linux users, it didn’t work. A Intel Mesa update patched the bug, and my game worked better. When I moved back I was on an older driver and had to wait for it to be added in.
Aaaaaah it’s gaming! Oh dear, I feel old. OK, so Arch gets the compiled drivers for gaming related HW before other distros? I guess, given the community of nerds (no offense), that would make sense. Thanks for clearing that up.
Still wouldn’t be ahead of the compilable distros. I urge you to switch to LFS, the real beginners distros. ;)
I wouldn’t worry too much about not knowing this. The steam deck is still relatively new and proton/dxvk is improving at such a blinding pace compared to the rest of Linux that my head is still spinning.
From my limited understanding, because of Arch’s rolling releases and Valve basing the steam deck on Arch. DXVK the compatibility layer for DX games to vulkan is managed by the distro. How this works is magic is still magic to me. I also think graphic drivers gets pushed on arch early too, since it’s a rolling release.
However I am in complete agreement, Arch isn’t beginner friendly, I personally like Manjaro and find it friendlier, but that’s like having a pet cat, and it’s a Bob cat. Sure it’s not a Lion, but it’s not a Kitty.
Anecdotally, Mint broke file permissions and then the mounting points for my home server setup. And I find Cinnamon to be quite ugly imho.
I tried Fedora and Debian and much prefer those two vs Mint. Also, KDE is incredibly beautiful on the Steam Deck.
P.S. Fedora and Debian work with secure boot OOTB. Helpful for a laptop install. I know you can make it work with Arch and Mint as well, and there’s issues+opinions with secure boot, but I just wanted something to work. I am not as adept with linux and the guides assumed a particular level of experience with it.
I installed Mint in my Windows user moms computer she loves it.(on windows it was unusably slow) It is a drop in replacement for beginners who want to use linux almost exactly the same way they have used windows. Fedora is good(and my fave) and not too unintuitive for beginners aswell but if someone wants to switch to linux but “keep using windows” Mint is the answer, not to mention all the extra software preinstalled to make stuff work out of the box.
An the thing is, I don’t use linux myself 😁. Lemme explain, I tried Nobara on my gaming desktop and loved it but was not geting the performance I was hoping for so I reinstalled the nvidia drivers. I fucked up and couldn’t get to the graphical UI anymore. For some ungodly reason not even live USB without the simplified graphics mode I formatted my drive thru the simplified live usb mode to nsft and installed Windows on it. To this day Linux literally can’t be installed on my Computer. Same bug. Plus Wayland isn’t quiite ready for nvidia cards yet, meaning I will do Linux on my next PC that will also have an AMD GPU.
It’s because it’s bleeding edge, extremely well documented and extremely popular. Bleeding edge is exciting and you’re gonna end up on the arch wiki anyway regardless of distro, so you may as well go to the source.
Do mind though it doesn’t mean it’s easy, like at all, and I fundamentally agree, there’s a million better choices for first timers.
I had to help a friend install the VMware kernel modules, since VMware is weird and VirtualBox sucks for virtualising Windows. I had to guide him through it step by step, making sure his commands were exact.
He’s only started using the terminal properly. Hell no, I’m not going to recommend Arch to him.
I think it depends on what the said beginner is after. If they just want something that works then sure archlinux isn’t the best option, but if they want learn more about linux then there’s nothing wrong with installing arch. When I was new to linux, I found the beginners install guide on the archwiki to be very helpful and learnt a fair bit about how things work. I think you then have a good overview of how your system works and therefore have a better idea of what needs fixing when things break.
Endeavor OS solves most of those problems. Out of box experience is fantastic, and the installer is the best I’ve ever used.
That being said, I still wouldn’t recommend it due to the Arch package maintainers willingness to break userspace.
You will do a system update and it will break something. Most recent for me was Python packages. I updated my system and suddenly pip stopped working because they decided to follow PEP-668 and force the user to install packages using pacman.
The rationale given was allowing the user to install packages outside of the distro’s control can potentially break system tools like Fedora’s DNF, which is python based.
Now, I’ve done this on Fedora, it’s not fun. But you know what else? FEDORA DOESN’T EVEN ENABLE THIS FEATURE YOU FUCKING IMBECILES.
It was annoying at first for me too but they tell you how to bypass it, so can’t you just use the flag –break-system-packages and make it an alias for pip?
There is a certain kind of beginner I would recommend Arch to, those rare folks who really do learn best from the bottom up. Candidates must also see “computers” as a hobby, and have separate hardware from their daily driver they’re installing/learning Linux on.
Honestly, I’m still not sure I would recommend Arch to those people. I honestly think most of those people would be better off on something like Gentoo or NixOS (depending on the class of weirdo we’re talking about). Arch in my experience is just more painful than it needs to be. Like, honest to god, there is no reason the user should have to fiddle with the keyring when updating… Figure it out.
Last used Linux over 10 years ago when I was in college for ITNA. It didn’t work out for me and I drive trucks for a living now lol. Computers/gaming has always been my hobby though. Decided a few weeks ago to try out Linux again on a spare computer I have. Started with EndeavorOS and broke it somehow. Went to mint for like a week and couldn’t get used to it for some reason and decided to try EndeavorOS again. Been using it for about a month now as my primary and only using the windows PC for gaming and it’s been great. Does take some tinkering and googling to get it how it want it from a fresh install though which I’ve had to do a couple times now because of hardware failures lol
I associate the pause symbol (two vertical lines) with “press here to pause.” I associate the playing symbol (sideways triangle) as “press here to play.”
The post appears to have been edited. It originally said something like “Everyone subconsciously associates…” Key word being Everyone, which seems to have been corrected so kudos to the OP.
So on to your point no, I do not think so. Please read again.
You’re still agreeing with the title. The title says most people interpret the pause symbol as “currently playing”, so clicking it would mean “click here to pause” - which is what you said :) It’s just the same thing with different wording
Oh, unless you meant on devices or software with two separate buttons for play and pause! In which case, yeah totally different and you’re right :)
If the system was muted, and I saw two vertical lines I would assume that meant “press here to pause.” The state of “the thing” to me has nothing to do with the symbol on the button.
How would you then, reconsile the the state of "the thing"on system that had individual buttons for functions such as play/pause/fast forward/rewind/record/eject/etc? Would the thing be playing and paused at the same time?
Really depends on the place of work. I work in the IT of out company and my PC isn’t monitored. My door is constantly open though and there are a lot of people passing. Me looking at the screen is normal and part of my work. Me looking at my phone is always seen as me not working.
Ik it's probably real but something about it feels pretty unnatural. Maybe the background's contrast against the birb, the smallness of the claws, the apple looking really smooth, the birb looking really smooth...
I think the apple looks so evenly lit it seems unreal, but a bird holding a piece of fruit is such an easy situation to create I feel like it'd be harder to Photoshop that than it would be to just give a bird a piece of fruit for real.
I’m picturing some sort of high tech containment field. Perhaps somewhere deep in a sub-basement laboratory at the Gore Naval Research Base in Antarctica. At the center, held aloft by powerful magnets, are two birds rapidly spinning, emitting an eerie blue glow. A series of tubes, illuminated from within by this mysterious ether, branch off in all directions. This is the core.
I see lol. They are dramatic birds. I gave mine the last of their food one day(I picked up more later that evening) and Antonio got into the empty bag and pouted. I removed him from the bag and he grabbed it and threw it and looked grumpy. Mind you, he had a bowl full of food. He just likes eating from a bag. When I brought the new bag of feed home, he got super in my face and was hella impatient when I was opening it.
Smoking. Millions of euros of taxpayer money spent every year on those lung cancer patients which could be well spent elsewhere. It’s also an activity that negatively affects not just the smoker but everyone around them.
What I find amusing is that the cigarettes packages where I live have disgusting images with the potential sickness it comes from its usage, and yet people still buy them 'hey man, this will literally kill you someday" warning does not work.
I thought this was a well known measure but it seems that my USA cousin did not know about this kind of marketing.
They ought to increase it by 2 years every time. That way people have to get clean. Also, we ( US citizens) should take control of all tobacco companies, and wind them down, putting all profits and assets towards addiction recovery services, and cancer treatments.
They’ve been making billions off of slowly killing people for the last 100+ years, they don’t need one more fucking day.
At least here in Germany this is apparently still not true as smokers in particular add a huge cost to the healthcare system due to the long-term and repeated damage. For example, once they get parts of their feet amputated from clogged arteries, most actually continue to smoke (“Ah well now it’s too late anyways”), and hence will get half a dozen such amputations over time.
Obesity is the issue these days not tobacco. Tobacco use is a fraction of what it once was. Now a huge portion of the EU and USA is obese, which causes way more strain on the healthcare system.
A report commissioned by the tobacco company Philip Morris, when the Czech government proposed raising cigarettes taxes in 1999, concluded that the effect of smoking on the public finance balance in the Czech Republic in 1999 was positive, an estimated net benefit of 5,815 million CZK (Czech koruny), or about US$298 million. 77 The analysis included taxes on tobacco, and health care and pension savings because of smokers’ premature death, as economic benefits of smoking, and these benefits exceeded the negative financial effects of smoking, such as increased health care costs. The report created a furore; public health advocates found the explicit assumption that premature death is beneficial morally repugnant. The controversy was described by the journalist Chana Joffe-Walt on the radio program This American Life,78 and was reported in the British Medical Journal.79 According to This American Life, Philip Morris distanced itself from the report in response to the controversy, banning its employees from citing the findings. In fact, the report’s claim that smoking was beneficial relies on its inclusion of taxes as a benefit, not any savings due to smokers’ premature deaths80 Costs associated with smoking while the smoker was still alive totalled 15,647 million CZK, 13 times more than the ‘benefits’ associated with early death. The net benefit reported in the analysis arose because the tobacco tax revenue of 20,269 million CZK was regarded as a benefit. As detailed in Section 17.1.1, taxes are not an economic cost (or benefit); they are a transfer payment. The recipient (the government) gets richer, while the taxpayer gets poorer.
So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.
Thanks to taxes (81½% of the price is tax on average), smokers are currently making my government a profit, including all the cancer care. Old people need a lot of healthcare, so people dying of cancer saves a lot of healthcare cost in the long term.
People need help getting off their addiction to give them a better life. Money isn’t really an issue. Turns out raising taxes for addicts, you can make a lot of money as a government!
I’m 100% for abolishing smoking. I particularly like the cut-off point approach, just stop people who turn 18 after a certain point from buying tabacco. This will slowly weed out the smoking habit, and in a couple of decades smoking will be seen as something old people and maybe foreigners do.
I know the tobacco industry has pushed the “smokers make the government money” narrative for decades, but since a few years it’s actually true. Mostly because the healthcare system is collapsing under high demand and retiring boomers and gen X will leave the country with a disproportionate amount of people needing care versus people working to provide/pay for care. Important surgeries can already take years to be scheduled and that’s only going to get worse the coming years.
This isn’t the “thank the tax payer for paying for themselves”, it’s yet another symptom of decades of terrible decisions and putting off necessary reforms to deal with the demographic changes.
Also, in general, “at least they don’t cost us money” isn’t a good defence in general for maintaining a system getting people addicted to huffing cancerous fumes. Even if taxes brought in double the money it costs to care for a cancered up smoker, we should still strive for a smoke-free society. That includes huffing other cancerous fumes, such as vapes and weed smoke.
While it seems rather obvious that inhaling carcinogenic fumes is bad for your health, I’ve never really found a study that shows harm by second hand smoke as serious as the harm of smoking itself, to be honest. I don’t think the damage second hand smoking does to the general population’s health is quite as bad as direct smoking is.
Second hand smoking is bad, but it’s orders of magnitude less dangerous than sucking the carcinogens straight out of a burning cigarette according to the papers I’ve scanned through. It’ll increase the healthcare cost a few percent, but it’s not as significant across the entire population as you’d think looking at the individual risks.
If we can end smoking, we’ll end secondhand smoking for free. Plus, places and people just smell nicer in general.
Thanks to taxes (81½% of the price is tax on average), smokers are currently making my government a profit, including all the cancer care. Old people need a lot of healthcare, so people dying of cancer saves a lot of healthcare cost in the long term.
You just trade out legal distributors for illegal distributors while ruining the lives of smokers by cycling them in and out of prison, feeding their need to smoke even more. Bad idea.
Yeah, I’m surprised at how many people here would simply like to add tobacco to the list of controlled substances and add more fuel to the shit firestorm that is the Drug War.
Do I believe the tobacco industry should be far more heavily regulated than it currently is? Absolutely. I actually feel that way about most legal drugs.
But imprisoning people for doing what they want with their own bodies in their own homes has already proven to be ineffective at curtailing drug use and abuse.
Additionally, the inhumane treatment of prisoners and former prisoners is a whole separate topic, but related in that the Drug War is just a corrupt mechanism to feed the prison-industrial complex. Why add another drug (tobacco) to the list of drugs cops can plant on your person and send you off to jail for?
Yeah, and unlike what people commonly think, it doesn’t just directly affect the user (first hand smoke) and the people around it (second hand smoke), but also the furniture and nature around it (third hand smoke).
I despise those cigarettes laying around everywhere in nature. You can even smell them on remotes if someone was a hardcore smoker.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I have less problems with the “luxury” items, such as cigars.
They’re usually hand-crafted expensive stuff that’s made to enjoy once and a while, compared to cigarettes which are mass produced with the sole purpose to get you addicted.
I think the same is true with alcohol. There’s the cheap, mass produced stuff vs the more expensive “hand”-crafted stuff.
I wish we could just enjoy these things without corporations trying to get us addicted to them at every opportunity, disregarding any of the dangers associated with consuming them.
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