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Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

lemmyshitpost

This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

MentalEdge , in It’s going good so far 🤞🤞
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

Yeah, but in federated social media you can just pack up and set up a new instance.

You won’t ever need to leave the whole thing behind to disconnect from corporate BS.

TheGoldenGod OP ,
@TheGoldenGod@lemmy.world avatar

My concerns the product advertisers attempting to sneak in, bragging or something. It felt rampant on Reddit, so it’s probably left me wary. 😣

MentalEdge ,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

And if that happens, you can bet your ass there will one day be instance-wide ad-block that auto-blocks users/instances known for posting ads.

If that becomes a thing, there will be instances that explicitly filter it out.

NotSteve_ ,

The problem is its hard to tell what’s an ad and what’s not. Sometimes people ARE just enthusiastic about a product they found and want to share it.

It’s easier when it’s a large company like Burger King or something; like most people won’t just suddenly start raving about this great new burger place they found called Burger King. It’s different for more obscure companies. It could be actual Lemmy users who are just passionate or it could be company employees trying to sneak advertisements into site discussions.

I don’t think there’s any AI or other tools that could distinguish the two.

saltesc ,

That’s exactly right, NorSteve_

That’s why I like to start my day with a Whopper and side of onion rings from my favourite local burger joint, Burger King. It supports the community and I get a dank feed while I scroll through Lemmy’s dank memes.

TokenBoomer ,

Don’t forget to try the new Whopper melt. Add bacon for $.50 more, or make it spicy with another $1.00. Can’t fight climate change on an empty stomach.

jackoneill ,

I hate you both lol

TokenBoomer ,

Teal ‘c would be proud.

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

I am one of these people, am a dope smoker and recently got into related Lemmy communities. There’s a lot of equipment that you dont hear about until through word of mouth so when I find something I LOVE through word of mouth like the arizer air max or brilliant cut grinder I do my part to scream their praises from the heavens so other smokers have a chance to hear about them.

sweetviolentblush ,
@sweetviolentblush@sh.itjust.works avatar

Oh nice, what communities would you recommend? I’m already in !trees, !microgrowery, !cannabiscultivation, !high_videos, !stoner_rock

Smokeydope , (edited )
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

!vaporents is an excellent community you may want to check into :) !trees is the trees community I frequent, will have to check out the shitjustworks one

sweetviolentblush ,
@sweetviolentblush@sh.itjust.works avatar

I have an Arizer too, the extreme q 👍

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

I just delved into the EQ this week, wonderful device!

sweetviolentblush ,
@sweetviolentblush@sh.itjust.works avatar

I love it, zero complaints. I’m about to smoke and listen to some music, I’m sure we’ll meet again in the 420 communities. Have a nice night friend

towerful ,

Double edge sword. “This guy is shilling” reports go rampant .

Hopefully, the Reddit bot trackers peeps will move to lemmy, and lend us their wisdom.
I learnt so many ways realise a poster or commenter was a bit from those peeps. Amazing MVPs!
And folks like kitboga taught me that spammers/scammers generally stick to a script.

It’s gonna be an arms race! Hopefully we win!

pomodoro_longbreak ,
@pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yo I also worry about advertisers attempting to target me with localised advertisements, which is why I use Borg VPN! Nice try, advertisers, but those “hot milfs” are nowhere near me, ha!

/parody

ElBarto ,

That’s why I started my own instance, I got the freedom to pick and choose what instances I allow, so if any corporation decides to join the fediverse I don’t have to wait for the admin to defedederate.

Just make sure if you’re using it as a personal instance to make it so no one but the admin can make communities and restrict your sign ups so your instance can’t get taken over by nutjobs.

pomodoro_longbreak ,
@pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works avatar

Interesting! Is there a risk of ballooning costs from legitimate bandwidth costs? Do you set some arbitrary limits on how much traffic you’ll support before you turn off the tap?

pomodoro_longbreak ,
@pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah I could see myself eventually joining a splinter of the fediverse that is even more rabidly anti-corporate than we are right now. Like constantly blocking shills and instances that refuse to do their own aggressive pruning.

CareHare , in jackin off

That guy must feel so included. Very wholesome.

vd1n , (edited )

That’s cool. I get punched for that.

Edit: didn’t mean to post tinder you… But I’m too lazy to fix it so I figured Id take more time out of my life to write this explanation of why my post is threaded to yours. And omg life is so fucked my misspelling of “under” auto corrected to tinder. God save us.

peopleproblems ,

“post tinder” would probably be like the regret you feel after seeing the thousands of likes your 2/10 female friend has and your 2 likes that are bots.

DudePluto OP ,

hell yeah

moosetwin ,

jackin off

Streetdog ,
@Streetdog@lemmy.world avatar

Your house or mine?

maxcharacterlimit ,

House?

KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX ,
@KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.ml avatar

Hell yeah

A_Random_Idiot , in RIP in pieces

how dare you give me false hope

Conyak ,

I would prefer to read that he lost all of his money and is now homeless. I’m not a fan of wishing even the worst people dead.

A_Random_Idiot ,

Nah, fuck that.

Some people, the greatest gift they can give to society and the species, is their removal from the gene pool.

basxto ,
@basxto@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Musk has 10 children, he is plenty present in the gene pool either way.

brbposting ,

Down for an equitable & fair (based on societal support of/contributions to his empire) redistribution of his wealth especially if it comes with a significant deplatforming, since he can’t stop spewing such vile opinions.

He can have a one-bedroom apartment no problem, heck even a house if he decided to ever see any of his million kids.

Certainly not a desirable fantasy, jumping straight to wanting somebody dead, unless that were the only way someone’s brutality could conceivably be stopped.

TimewornTraveler ,

What’s sad is that even if he’s gone in body or in wealth, some other jackasses will still be around to ruin everything for us.

Brosplosion ,

Prefer dead. Estate taxes would be a field day

Corkyskog ,

What percentage are estate taxes? What if the solution to wealth inequality is just murdering the 0.1% and heirs until the money has all been collected back by the government…

Fallenwout ,

What a shit community this has become when hoping someone is dead has this much upvotes.

Strykker ,

The man is an asshole and stain on society, his death would likely marginally improve the world’s future outlook.

A_Random_Idiot ,

how dare you be mean to Fallenwouts big beloved internet daddy.

Anderenortsfalsch ,

What a shit guy who cares more about people who live in thousands of years than people who live today:

netzpolitik.org/…/longtermism-an-odd-and-peculiar…

aeon.co/…/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dang…

Why do I think this ideology is so dangerous? The short answer is that elevating the fulfilment of humanity’s supposed potential above all else could nontrivially increase the probability that actual people – those alive today and in the near future – suffer extreme harms, even death. Consider that, as I noted elsewhere, the longtermist ideology inclines its adherents to take an insouciant attitude towards climate change. Why? Because even if climate change causes island nations to disappear, triggers mass migrations and kills millions of people, it probably isn’t going to compromise our longterm potential over the coming trillions of years. If one takes a cosmic view of the situation, even a climate catastrophe that cuts the human population by 75 per cent for the next two millennia will, in the grand scheme of things, be nothing more than a small blip – the equivalent of a 90-year-old man having stubbed his toe when he was two.

Bostrom’s argument is that ‘a non-existential disaster causing the breakdown of global civilisation is, from the perspective of humanity as a whole, a potentially recoverable setback.’ It might be ‘a giant massacre for man’, he adds, but so long as humanity bounces back to fulfil its potential, it will ultimately register as little more than ‘a small misstep for mankind’. Elsewhere, he writes that the worst natural disasters and devastating atrocities in history become almost imperceptible trivialities when seen from this grand perspective. Referring to the two world wars, AIDS and the Chernobyl nuclear accident, he declares that ‘tragic as such events are to the people immediately affected, in the big picture of things … even the worst of these catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life.’

This way of seeing the world, of assessing the badness of AIDS and the Holocaust, implies that future disasters of the same (non-existential) scope and intensity should also be categorised as ‘mere ripples’. If they don’t pose a direct existential risk, then we ought not to worry much about them, however tragic they might be to individuals. As Bostrom wrote in 2003, ‘priority number one, two, three and four should … be to reduce existential risk.’ He reiterated this several years later in arguing that we mustn’t ‘fritter … away’ our finite resources on ‘feel-good projects of suboptimal efficacy’ such as alleviating global poverty and reducing animal suffering, since neither threatens our longterm potential, and our longterm potential is what really matters.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longtermism

He does not care about us, why should anyone care about him? Unfortunately other rich people are also into this, because it helps them to ignore the worlds problems and to do whatever they want to the people living now.

Azuth , in Omar going crazy

What an amazing landlord, I’ll make sure to tip extra well this month.

prole ,

Gross

idunnololz ,
@idunnololz@lemmy.world avatar

Person of land*

Astrealix , in Divide and rule
@Astrealix@lemmy.world avatar

I read “brutish” as “british” on first glance

Car ,

More often than not that has been the case :)

feedum_sneedson ,

Much less often than not, by a colossal margin. They did have a good run, though.

bulwark ,

Same, and I was like well if the shoe fits…

feedum_sneedson ,

you must acquit

SomeBoyo , (edited )

Which surprisingly does not change the meaning as much, as one would think it would.

dave ,
@dave@feddit.uk avatar

If you ever need to check, this site has up to date information. arethebritsatitagain.org

femboy_bird ,

Are the brits a tit again

Siegfried ,

I can’t find any differences

00x0xx ,

Considering the behavior of British tourist globally today, or even the history of their empire, the two words may as well have the same meaning.

ThePyroPython ,

I can only apologise for my fellow countrymen. They’re pricks, especially a group of lads or the typical Gammon family unit, and it’s why I try to holiday in places with as few of them as possible.

00x0xx ,

Accusing the British of being Brutes is like accusing Germans of being Nazi’s. It is rooted in the historic actions of these nations, rather than anything in particular they’ve done today. Sure British tourist have their stereotypes, but honestly they aren’t worse than Chinese tourist, or Muslim migrants. As long as British tourist are still paying customers, many nations will still be happy to host them. Don’t take these comments so seriously, it’s all in good humor.

Brexit on the other hand is a tragedy so awful that you can wonder how a nation once known for it’s ability to govern an empire spanning the entire globe, and innovators of capitalism, made such a stupid decision. Like pointing a gun to your head and pulling the trigger thinking it will cure your headache. It’s so ridiculous I still can’t come up with a proper insult to throw at the Brits concerning their decision to commit economic suicide.

JoMiran , in Bad noodle.
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

“Scream not working because space make deaf.”

I need this on a T-shirt and I think I want to use that as the title track to my album.

watson387 ,
@watson387@sopuli.xyz avatar

I will buy that album based on title alone.

DJDarren ,

It’s an industrial metal album, right?

hydrospanner ,

Polka, actually!

ReplicantBatty , (edited ) in This should be fun

What animal do you think should be hunted to extinction?

PP_BOY_ OP ,
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

Any animal? Probably an elephant

De_Narm , (edited ) in Tipping culture npcs

Something I don’t get, why is it percentage based? I mean, I get it from the waiters perspective. But as a customer? Whether my one plate of food is 20$ or 200$, he did the same thing. Scaling with more items or time spent would seem more appropriate.

greedytacothief ,

Well usually more people means a higher bill, more people is more work. Lots of places even just add gratuity to the bill once a group size is large enough.

But tipping is dumb, and working in the service industry sucks… I have no easy solutions.

Sprawlie ,

I have no easy solutions.

There’s an easy one that could be legislated tomorrow by any states.

Raise minimum wages and enforce it throughout ALL workplaces, including wait staff. Nobody should be earning less than a living wage just because they’re restaraunt staff.

greedytacothief ,

Politics is one of those things that’s easy when you say it, but much harder for you to do. But if that’s easy for you to do, then please do it, for all our sakes.

Patches ,

Nobody would work in a restaurant for minimum wage. Full stop. It’s a shit job.

That’s the secret nobody in the industry wants to tell you. They make way more than minimum wage on good nights. You could come away at $25-30/hr on a Friday night.

Tremble ,

Which is what workers at McDonald’s in other countries make per hour, not including benefits. Oh, and the food is cheaper than in the states too.

Sprawlie ,

Absolutely. it’s a bad precedent.

Minimum wage staff still get tips though. I still tip here now that it’s mandatory they get paid min wage. Overall, means that they make more than before they were earning min wage as well.

it’s a big win. They ge ta living wage doing their jobs and they get bonuses in tips on top of their living wage instead of relying upon it.

cole ,
@cole@lemdro.id avatar

Seattle’s minimum wage is $16.28, but most restaurants seem to pay a fair bit more than that. Tipping is still rampant and has not been reduced. I don’t think this solution would work

danc4498 ,

I think the $20 vs $200 was a per person price. Like, if I order the steak for $50 and you order a grilled cheese sandwich for $8, we both got the same amount and quality of service, why do we tip differently?

betheydocrime ,

Serving a $200 meal requires a lot of knowledge and physical skill that the server down at Chili’s probably doesn’t have. The kind of restaurant that sells a $200 meal also has a larger support staff that must be given a percentage of the server’s tip

NoIWontPickaName ,

What difference is there between serving a $200 meal and a $50 one?

_number8_ ,

pretension

GBU_28 ,

Are number of items fixed in your question?

If so, little mechanically on the waiters part.

But, a more expensive meal comes with higher service standards. More attentive, but not intrusive. More knowledgeable about the menu. More readiness to make adjustments based on customer need.

So in that situation you are asking for a more experienced, or more skillfully employee, and that costs more.

usualsuspect191 ,

I’d argue the skill difference matters much more in the kitchen, yet they only see a tiny percentage of the tips if they’re lucky

NoIWontPickaName ,

Ah see, to me their whole job is bringing me food, keeping my drink from being empty, and not being rude.

I don’t need all the pomp, I go to a restaurant for the food.

The funny part is you are effectively paying twice for that since the restaurant has increased the price of the food to account for all the pomp.

betheydocrime ,

I think you’re looking for the difference between fine dining and nouvelle cuisine / haute cuisine. Think of it like the difference between a nice steakhouse where the server essentially takes your order and gives you a plate, and one of those Instagram dinners where they serve your dessert in hollow chocolate balls and serving is a more involved and delicate process because of the nature of the food you’re serving

NoIWontPickaName ,

I have a place down the road that makes guacamole in a molcajete at the table.

That is way harder and more impressive than pouring a little hot chocolate.

If you can scam them into paying it then more power to you though.

betheydocrime ,

Sounds like that server deserves a generous tip, I hope you take good care of them :)

asteriskeverything ,

You’re not wrong, that’s the logic behind it. It’s not like you’re defending it so idk why you’re getting down voted! What you also didn’t mention is that at these restaurants is that it is a much more leisurely meal and experience, so there isn’t high table turnover which lessens the tips. I suspect they also have smaller sections.

dream_weasel ,

You’re the only one who gets it.

Everything is probably a la carte. You gotta know what is in every dish, what pairs with it from appetizers to sides to wine to dessert. You don’t walk out and ask “who had the cheeseburger?” because the expectation on the experience is higher. You’re controlling the timing at the table as well. When do you fire the main after they get the appetizer? Salad? Bread? Drinks? Which SIDE of the person do you give or remove plates? And yeah you gotta tip the bartender, the bussers, the expediters sometimes, and who knows who else.

It is still horseshit, but it’s not as easy as dropping a rib basket on the table.

Be mad about the tip line on the sandwich shop menu, be mad about 20% tip on the burger joint that has a modern industrial interior and a $22 burger, don’t be mad about paying out the Friday Saturday night white tablecloth servers with a tough fucking job of conducting your whole anniversary meal. You get to have a good experience once a year, they’ve got 15 other once a year meals to solve and it’s just a regular dinner shift.

pjwestin ,
@pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

I’d say you also shouldn’t be made at the server at the $22 burger place, because they’re also working hard and probably covering more tables. I used to get mad about tipping for counter service because I assumed that they were making standard minimum wage, but then I found out one of my favorite cafes was paying $5 an hour (a dollar less than tipped minimum in my state). Point is, don’t get mad at anyone but the National Restaurant Association, they’re fighting to make sure you’re subsidizing your servers wage.

Imgonnatrythis ,

If you are are trying to find logic within tipping you might as well chase windmills. It’s dumb as bolts.

EdibleFriend ,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Chasing a windmill would be really easy tho.

lobut ,

Just don’t get chasing waterfalls though.

EdibleFriend ,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

On the other hand rivers and lakes are so stupid.

Wogi ,

Because it’s a con, and if it were a flat rate, people would see it for the con it is. By making it a percentage of sales, you can delude people in to believing they’re going to make more in tips than they would on an hourly rate.

Sometimes that’s true, for the vast majority of servers it isn’t.

Rentlar ,

I see it as a sneaky incentive from management for waiters to upsell you on more sides, drinks and desserts.

Since the more marked up extras a waiter/waitress can fool people into getting, the better tip they can hope to earn at the end because of the %-based expectation.

Patches ,

deleted_by_author

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  • Mirodir ,

    Not every meal in a “$x/plate” restaurant is gonna cost the same though. It’s not hard to reach a disparity between the cheapest and most expensive reasonable meal (similar sizes) of around a factor of 2 at many restaurants.

    Why is the server getting twice the tip if I order the most expensive plate and dessert vs cheapest plate and dessert?

    GBU_28 ,

    Each plate of food or drink is a transaction, each with expectations of quality, and expectations on the waiter to make it right.

    hark ,
    @hark@lemmy.world avatar

    Make what right? They’re just bringing it to my table. If the food or service sucks I’m also told that you should tip anyway, so it seems like tipping isn’t based on quality (and really, it isn’t).

    pjwestin ,
    @pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

    $20 is like, one entree, maybe a beverage at a cheap restaurant. $200 is probably closer to 3 entrees, 2 or 3 cocktails and an app at a moderately priced restaurant. You’re crazy if you think the amount of work for those two orders (putting them into the bar/kitchen, making sure they come out correct, running them, all while juggling your other tables) is equal. I also want tipping culture to end, but the price tag scales pretty well with the amount of work being done.

    wer2 ,

    Waffle House: feed a family of 4 for $20 Tip: $4 “Fancy” Restaurant: microwaved appetizer $20 Tip: $5

    A percentage scales within an establishment, but not really across them.

    pjwestin ,
    @pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

    I’d say that varies more regionally than anything else. I live in a major northeastern city, and you could barely feed 1 person for $20, even at cheap chain restaurants. Drive 2 hours away and things get a lot more affordable, not only for food prices but also rent. In that respect, 20% actually scales with cost of living as well.

    player2 ,

    It mostly bothers me when I just order 1 entree and a water. At one place that might cost $10, and at another place it might cost $30, and all the wait staff did was carry a plate from the kitchen to me in both cases.

    It doesn’t seem fair that the wait staff at the more expensive place gets tipped more than the less expensive place just because of an arbitrary custom.

    The extra cost of the expensive meal is mostly due to ingredients, the cooking process, the location, and maaay slightly more complicated table setting.

    pjwestin ,
    @pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

    Yeah, I agree, but if you don’t like it, take it up with the National Restaurant Association. They spend millions every year lobbying against ending the tipped wage.

    auraness ,

    That’s insane. It’s literally the job. Imagine applying this logic to any service industry job.

    pjwestin ,
    @pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

    Yeah, I know. As is said, I want tipping culture to end. We’ve created a system where the customer pays for servers salary by the job instead of the restaurant paying by the hour. I’m saying that running a $200 order is more work than running a $20 order, just like bagging $200 worth of groceries is more work than bagging $20 worth of groceries. A percentage tip does roughly reflect the amount of work being done, but acknowledging that isn’t an endorsement of tipping culture.

    TheLowestStone ,
    @TheLowestStone@lemmy.world avatar

    If you’re getting the same level of service at a restaurant serving $200/plate meals as you are at TGI Fridays, either you’re being ripped off of your local Fridays has amazing servers.

    MeepMorp , in text don't call

    I remember this one. Someone else lost him, but he knew where he was and wanted to be there.

    SpaceCowboy ,
    @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

    Yeah that’s the only way it makes sense.

    I mean if you have a functioning phone and you felt you were in danger, would you sit around waiting for someone to call you?

    Our guy was obviously having a merry old time out hiking, and ignoring unknown numbers. Then only found out later someone else was freaked out about him being lost.

    But a story like that isn’t going to get shared as a facebook meme…

    player2 ,

    This is like when I was 11 and my family went hiking up a mountain in Yellowstone. My young cousin and I thought my brother was ahead of us on the trail so we hurried up trying to catch up to him. We were passing many hikers on a busy trail and being safe.

    An hour later my brother comes running up behind us saying everyone is looking for us! Apparently the park rangers had been mobilized to search for us, the missing children, and when we got down the mountain an hour or more later our families were down there in tears fearing we had fallen off the mountain or something.

    Point being, it’s totally possible for everyone to think you’re lost and in danger when you are fine and know exactly where you are.

    awwwyissss ,

    Did you read the other guy’s story in this thread, pretty funny

    Nollij ,

    That last part sounds like how Disney World deals with lost kids- You’re not lost, you’re right here. It’s your parents that are lost.

    player2 ,

    Yes it was annoying how our families kept bringing up how we “got lost on the mountain” during the trip and we kept having to remind them that we weren’t lost, just hiking!

    TootSweet , in Gonna be a great day!

    In my economics 101 gen ed course back in college, I remember a story about some society somewhere that used boulders as currency. But they were such a pain to lug around that often times they wouldn’t move them. They’d just keep track of who owned which boulders. “I’ll give you one boulder for a cow.” “Ok, it’s a deal.” “Cool, cool. The boulder over in so-and-so’s field is your now. Pleasure doing business with you.”

    There was even a case where someone tried to transport a boulder across a lake but the boat sank midway and the boulder ended up on the lakebed under many feet of water. But they kept exchanging the boulder as currency for goods and services.

    I’m imagining a dystopian Idiocracy-like future where Bitcoin has deleted itself, but people still trade seed phrases on slips of paper or pressed into metal plates with a “there’s 7 whole Bitcoins in this wallet. Trust me bro.”

    DanglingFury ,

    “This note is redeemable in boulders”

    1024_Kibibytes ,

    I believe you’re referring to Rai stones:

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones?wprov=sfla1

    Betch ,
    @Betch@lemmy.world avatar

    There was actually a crypto named after those called RaiBlocks but it’s called Nano now.

    snooggums ,
    @snooggums@kbin.social avatar

    Named after giant stonework, changed to a label that means very small. Hmmmm.

    ZagamTheVile ,

    The Triganic Pu is a unit of galactic currency, with an exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu. This is simple enough, but, since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Funny, I was thinking about the point where the Golgafrinchams on Earth adopted the leaf as currency and then burned down all the forests to control inflation.

    ZagamTheVile ,

    That still makes more sense than crypto.

    empireOfLove , (edited )

    “I’ll give you one boulder for a cow.” “Ok, it’s a deal.” “Cool, cool. The boulder over in so-and-so’s field is your now. Pleasure doing business with you.”

    This is how gold standard currencies work (or used to work). Most western currencies like the US dollar used to be permanently pegged to a specific value of gold kept in national treasuries (the Bretton-Woods system), and the dollar was meant to be redeemable for this gold. But because of the impracticality of handling and storing actual physical metals actual trade was almost never handled in gold.

    In reality, the US financial system already kind of runs like your “dystopian future”, and has done so since 1971. There is no inherent value to a US dollar besides the federal government saying “trust me bro”.

    AlwaysNowNeverNotMe ,
    @AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social avatar

    Hey they just audited fort Knox back in 1953 and it was all good no reason to go poking around.

    baldingpudenda ,

    The fact that people give money to the US, or any country, for essentially an IOU slip of paper promising to pay you back with interest is so weird.

    Speaking of gold reminds me of this sci-fi book where aliens come to earth and cause damage. They ask how they can make things right and are explained gold and the monetary system. They go oh, we can totally filter gold from the oceans and pay you back in tons of gold per day. This caused panic as the huge influx would crash the system. I think it was an asimov short story.

    snooggums ,
    @snooggums@kbin.social avatar

    Anything other than direct trade will be based on trust, since even precious metals like gold only hold a certain value because of trust.

    saigot , (edited )

    IDK is it really, to me pegging the value to some arbitrary piece of metal seems weirder. If we actually traded real gold and the government decided “hey no, that doesn’t count” you’d be forced to give it back anyway, and they could also force you to do it for no gold. Monetary value only ever had one real source and that’s the person with sufficient force to enforce the trade, which in any stable country is the government.

    CarbonIceDragon ,
    @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social avatar

    Funnily enough about that “forced to give back real gold used for trade”, the US kinda did that at one point, making it for a time illegal to possess more than a certain amount of gold and requiring people give anything over that amount to the government for a set price.

    theneverfox ,
    @theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

    Oh, it’s so much weirder than that. When you take a loan, the bank just creates the money based on a percentage of their deposits. Then, they can count that deposit as part of their “real” money. They now have a debt, which does not count against their “real” money

    They can then package the loans together, and sell those. This is again “real” money, so can be deposited and used to give out more loans.

    But wait! You’re probably thinking “that’s way too simple, let’s run statistics on this!” You’d be right, welcome to the first layer of modern banking.

    What happens if a bunch of people can’t repay? Then the bank hides whatever money they can before admitting they can’t make their payments, collapses, and a federal banking system takes over to repackage the assets and loans to another bank (usually without the customers noticing). Or the government writes you a bailout check.

    You might think “wait, my constitution says who can print money, why do we have to take loans?” Because they haven’t declassified what happened to the last US president who thought private banks probably shouldn’t be given the monopoly to print money.

    What happens if this happens all at once? Well that’s the government’s problem. They can devalue their currency by printing more money or take a loan from the world bank.

    Then, you get a bank official that gets to take over your country’s finances. Depending how much the US likes you and how hard you bend over, either you get austerity and they sell off your economic future for a bit more cash now, and you get milked for tax dollars indefinitely, or they cut you a deal, and they give you a way out eventually if you do everything they say.

    You might think you could just let the banks fail, but no. That’s how you get an injection of freedom.

    You might think about pinning the printing of money to exchange rates or to tax income and managing the banking system socially (since the risk is socialized, why let someone take the profits?), but no. That’s how you get an injection of freedom, comrade.

    You should probably stop thinking about other systems before you look a little low on freedom, this is how banking and money work.

    SCB ,

    This is not at all how banking or money works lol

    This is like half true, but misremembered, shit and half just insane conspiracy theory.

    In retrospect it’s probably not misremembered. You were probably fed disinformation intentionally, with shreds of truth glued to it.

    MenacingPerson ,

    You’re just saying they’re wrong without any actual argument.

    SCB , (edited )

    Their being wrong is pretty self-evident with even the most cursory of Google.

    I’m not the person arguing in favor of wild climbs, but rather the person suggesting that those arguments have no proof, and don’t match the accepted reality. The more wild the claim, the stronger the necessary proof.

    theneverfox ,
    @theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

    I was being glib, because I find our monetary system so ridiculous I have to embrace absurdity or it’s upsetting

    Obviously the JFK conspiracy is light on evidence, but the entire situation is definitely a conspiracy - something happened, it could’ve been geopolitical or the people keeping tabs on Lee Harvey Oswald really messed up. His story alone is pretty crazy… But anyways, every time I dive into it I find myself leaning more towards it being related to his banking statements than the alternatives, but who knows.

    The foreign interventions are mostly declassified though, they’re an absurd read. It wasn’t always the US, but it was always one of the 5 eyes who got involved when alternate systems started to gain traction.

    The IMF/World bank piece wasn’t even exaggerated though. Obviously they make it sound a lot more innocent, but I don’t think I even exaggerated this - it’s a legitimate conspiracy working out in the open. It’s truly horrifying. I didn’t even know how it worked until I took an install in a relatively rich Caribbean country (aka big tourist Island with a large “white” population).

    It was a tiny contract - I took it to help someone out and see somewhere beautiful, couldn’t have been more than $15k all together - literal hobbiest level gear. It’s not working and I’ve only got a day left to make it work (at least it turns out it wasn’t my fault), and this dude comes up with a big camera like he owns the place, says he’s from the world bank, and starts “politely” asking me to pose for the camera and do an interview about how this will help the country. I have no idea how to answer, I’m sunburnt, this isn’t really my field, and after seeing the computer center has all the computers on dirty blocks because it floods, I genuinely doubt this would be helpful in any situation… It’s basically a backup for if their Internet goes down, but in that case the place is probably flooded anyways

    Turns out, the country was getting a pretty big uptick in income from tourism, so the world bank “offered” to fund a bunch of (from my perspective at least) unhelpful infrastructure projects. They’d had decades of austerity before that, their roads were worn out, the power grid was janky, obviously there was seasonal flooding in important places, and although tourism was their main income they didn’t have transportation or hotels… Just bed and breakfasts and a dude I could arrange to give me a ride in the mornings.

    So instead of fixing anything critical, they had some plan to build a road straight across the mountain range, with some crazy long tunnel for an insane price and a multi-year time frame.

    People were pissed. Their economy was basically government funding allocated by the IMF “recommendations”, which come with the stick of “we’ll pull out and downgrade your credit if you don’t pass this”, and people hanging around waiting for odd jobs from the people on the government payroll.

    So the world bank was doing a bunch of little projects that changed nothing, and covering them like the staged rescue effort videos China loves so much.

    This felt very weird to me. Google any 2-3 descriptions of the IMF (just read an and you’ll notice they allude to a lot Investopedia, first result, just read the IMF part carefully, then hit Wikipedia if you want to go down the rabbit hole). It’s pretty dark, it’s stuff you’d think was from a century ago, but it’s actively happening still.

    So if anything, I think I undersold the reality of that real life conspiracy.

    I’d be genuinely interested to know if I was actually wrong about any of this… I’ve found a lot of post-hock justifications why things are the way they are, but to me, monetary systems seem like layers of justifications for an organization too powerful to call them out on it when they cheat. Debt doesn’t produce value when housing prices go through the roof, when you take on credit card/payday debt, or when you get stuck with medical bills… It seems to me like it only works when you take out a loan for a small business, something that used to be big, but now more and more it creates nothing, expands no capability. It just flows upwards endlessly

    SCB , (edited )

    I barely got so far as interventions and the IMF. The IMF is not involved in the political aims of the US, so your entire point about “bending over for the US” is absurd. Nothing in either of their descriptions is “dark,” and their interventions have ended total systemic collapse of nations - very notably those of Spain and Greece.

    I am generally pro US intervention, especially in opposition to communism.

    Between the above and ideas like this:

    Debt doesn’t produce value when housing prices go through the roof

    Which don’t even correlate, or necessarily even have any actual meaning as-written, it’s fair to say your baseline is grossly misinformed

    As a for-instance, this example produces value twice

    when you take on credit card/payday debt

    theneverfox ,
    @theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

    Yeah, that’s why I gave you some starting links… It’s a complicated topic, and I’d hope you’d at least take a look…I gave my anecdote. It’s not hard to find reputable accounts of them being straight up monsters, and the results speak for themselves… They have not been a good thing for the “third world” no matter how you slice it.

    And I didn’t mean the US government, I meant spreading those cheeks for investors to buy up the underdeveloped resources at an extremely low value, and they’re forced to drop export taxes to the ground and maintain the roads from their mines to the port, they miss out on both the money leaving their country (reducing their tax income, because velocity of money is a huge part of taxes, and it’s not bouncing around their country anymore). It’s crippling.

    But the alternative is economic warfare, a tool that the IMF has and does use with anyone who doesn’t play ball. They downgrade your currency, lowering the exchange rate. You then have to print more, until you get to balance between hyperinflation and getting cut off from global trade, because now you have to use dollars, and the exchange rate only gets worse (cough Argentina and Venezuela)

    But again, this is complicated and I can’t do the necessary reading for you.

    I’m more worried about your understanding of value… Friend, I don’t know how to tell you this, but money is symbolic. Categorically.

    It is representative of actual value… It’s not the value itself - if money had intrinsic value, you’d just be bartering with commodities. We used gold and silver notes, because they were worth almost nothing themselves… It’s a necessary aspect of money, because if the underlying commodity, say iron ingots, suddenly had a critical shortage and shot way past the value of the notes, you’re back to bartering.

    And money isn’t valuable because of intrinsic trust - you have to be able to buy things with it or it’s just paper.

    You need actual value, otherwise we could all just print money and be billionaires. When a person or company is able to do a new thing, do more of the old thing, or do the old thing better - that’s value. There’s more of the things people want, or better things to buy, and that justifies more money being introduced into the system.

    This is like age of mercantilism economics, this is why money is minted, and they used carved shells, beads, and pretty rocks pretty much everywhere beforehand. The value of money is the value of all the stuff divided by the money in circulation, and the king would hoard and spend to keep things healthy (ideally)

    So debt is sort of like negative money. But it’s not really - it’s just the promise you’ll give them more money later. A payday

    The amount of things didn’t change - but neither did the amount of money. Let’s go with payday loans since it’s clear cut. These people still have to pay rent, they still have to eat, and the positive money doesn’t melt when it encounters negative money. You introduce money with the debt, people buy the things they had to buy anyways, and maybe they buy a little less… Except we don’t live in a mercantile system, we live in a consumerist system that is transitioning to some sort of unholy techno-fuedalism hellscape.

    In consumerism, the amount of money doesn’t matter as much. Velocity does. Velocity generates taxes now that we don’t do straight tithes to the lord, it drives production, increases worker wages, hires more people, pays for r&d. At every stage, things get cheaper, people can buy more, the whole pie grows. I think it’s horrifying, but that’s the value of money - it used to be normal for factory workers to have a vacation house and/or a boat.

    They create new things and make a demand for it. Everyone got more stuff, science and technology chugged along fantastically. Basic needs were met, and they made new shit… Value

    Then we get to regenomics, the mofo actually convinced people that what we really needed was more inequality.

    And here’s the problem… They’re not putting that money into r&d, they’re putting it into gaming the system. Money begets political power begets money. It’s far more lucrative to play with money than to create value

    When someone takes a payday loan, where does the value come from? The amount of money is the same… But now it goes to someone not because they created value, but because they had money to lend. The guy paying his mortgage isn’t creating value - the money flows up to bounce around with people who use it like points in a game. You now make someone on the edge just a little closer to producing no value, because homeless people have less subjective value in their life now, because now they get to scramble to balance staying healthy with doing something, and the guy with the money either puts it in the quants, unfair advantage side of the investment markets gatekeep, he invests it into lobbying or media, or he stashes it in his hoard in the Caymans.

    You can’t spend a billion dollars on adding value to your life - there’s only so many mansions to buy and so many that yacht a guy can buy before it becomes a chore (2… Boats are a pain). The money doesn’t have velocity, we’ve slashed taxes on hoarding too thanks to neolibs/conservatives.

    One guy gets less value for his money, the other guy gets respect from his peers for screwing over a few million poor people on the edge.

    Where’s the value? I don’t even agree with these systems of value, but I don’t think even post hock undergrad economics sees value here

    SCB , (edited )

    I couldnt force myself to read this entire thing because it’s full of very incorrect gems like

    They create new things and make a demand for it.

    That’s not how demand works at all

    The guy paying his mortgage isn’t creating value -

    You know these things aren’t up for debate right? Like whether or not value is created is a fact, not an opinion.

    Your worldview would be less weird if you understood the actual world . I mean cmon-

    This is like age of mercantilism economics, this is why money is minted,

    Really?

    And money isn’t valuable because of intrinsic trust - you have to be able to buy things with it or it’s just paper.

    How stoned were you when you wrote this?

    I’ve seen some things on this site man. Some people totally unhinged from reality. This one might take the cake.

    Lol Jesus dude I want this cross-stitched and framed

    This is like age of mercantilism economics, this is why money is minted, and they used carved shells, beads, and pretty rocks pretty much everywhere beforehand. The value of money is the value of all the stuff divided by the money in circulation, and the king would hoard and spend to keep things healthy (ideally)

    theneverfox ,
    @theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

    … Ok dude, I literally got that from a macroeconomics course.

    But you’ve just called me crazy a bunch of times, I left a bunch of tidbits for anyone who sees this later, and you haven’t really made any argument. Maybe something I said will pop into your head later, you’ll crack a book to attempt to disprove it, but I accept I’m not going to educate you today.

    But let’s hear from you - there’s one answer I’m really dying to hear.

    What is value?

    SCB , (edited )

    It’s not weird once you realize that almost nothing has any inherent value if it isn’t food, medicine, ammunition, or fuel.

    Gold does not have any inherent value. It has value for the exact same reason money does, only fiat currency isn’t prone to the problems a gold standard causes.

    BB69 ,

    The value of the dollar is the battleships, war planes, and nuclear missiles.

    WhiteHawk ,

    How many battleships is a dollar?

    peopleproblems ,

    do you have the graph? gotta show the graph.

    rynzcycle ,

    You'd record the transfer by adding it to the rockchain?

    ininewcrow ,
    @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca avatar

    How about a society that trades and exchanges goods and services for boulders … and an infinite number of imaginary boulders that don’t exist at all.

    Kidplayer_666 ,

    I think you just accidentally created conventional money again

    SexualPolytope ,
    @SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    It’s very close to how fiat currency works IRL.

    ninjan , in The Aliens did a little trolling

    While saying, “stupid assholes there are no proper races of humans just color variations”.

    Diprount_Tomato ,
    @Diprount_Tomato@lemmy.world avatar

    TIL east Asian people don’t exist

    Etterra ,

    Human “races” are Functionally more closely related to dog breeds than anything else, but far less extreme in variation of features.

    A chihuahua is more different compared to a great dane than you are from any other ethnicity of fellow human.

    effward ,
    @effward@lemmy.world avatar

    Who is downvoting this??

    pinkdrunkenelephants ,

    Downvotes aren’t real. People use bots to downvote each other all the time here so why would you take them seriously?

    SpaceNoodle ,

    Found the asshole who uses bots to downvote people

    pinkdrunkenelephants ,

    How was I downvoted just now, then? 🤔

    SpaceNoodle ,

    Guess you need more bots.

    pinkdrunkenelephants ,

    Seriously? You’re that mad at me for telling the truth? For all I know, you’re using bots to downvote me and try to get revenge against me on the internet.

    You need to touch grass so bad.

    SpaceNoodle ,

    Maybe you’re actually the bot, since you clearly lack a sense of humor.

    HonoraryMancunian ,

    Chihuahuas

    NikkiDimes , in Share with those less fortunate

    “The last one” 💀

    eezeebee , in One million years from now...
    @eezeebee@lemmy.ca avatar
    RufusFirefly ,
    @RufusFirefly@lemmy.world avatar

    The last time I saw a Wizard of id comic strip was in the early 70s.

    newIdentity , in The difference of stealing yourself vs being stolen from

    Fun fact: Android is older.

    designatedhacker ,

    Technically correct, but it was originally aimed at Blackberry. pcworld.com/…/original_android_prototype_revealed…

    Apple pioneered a moderately useful mobile browser and fully touch screen UI (except for the home button).

    They’ve been copying each other ever since, to the point where I watch the WWDC keynote thinking “they didn’t already have THAT!?” most of the time.

    ChronosWing ,

    More like Apple copies an android feature that is more than a decade old then claims it as some kind of innovation.

    Sethayy ,

    slaps a buzzword on it and makes a trillion. Can’t believe some iphone users consider widgets modetn

    Corkyskog ,

    My old boss would always buy the new IPhone the day it came out and brag about features and a lot of the times I would be scratching my head being like how is that different then what I have on my 4 year old android Galaxy 6??

    BallsInTheShredder ,

    They just got widgets? Widgets have been on Android since my first smart phone in 2011 at the very least

    Anticorp ,

    Now they do, but the iPhone was revolutionary when it was released. Apple literally changed the world with their invention.

    Whippen ,

    A lot of people forget the early days.

    Android had copy/paste first, Apple didn’t for a long time.

    Android had MMS support first, Apple didn’t for a long time.

    Android had multi tasking apps first, apple didn’t for a long time.

    Android allowed app store apps to duplicate inbuilt apps, like web browsers, music players, email clients. Apple banned these for a long time.

    Anticorp ,

    Android was a poor comparison when iPhone first released. I had one of them. It was neat because it was new, but realistically it was a piece of shit compared to the iPhone. I’m no Apple fan boy, but they genuinely changed the world in many ways

    jarfil ,

    When iPhone first released… it was a piece of shit compared to the HTC Dream with Android. The main improvement Apple did, was removing the keyboard.

    psycho_driver ,

    If there were slide qwerty phones I’d still be buying them to this day.

    BallsInTheShredder ,

    I miss them so much. Those, and IR transmitters being common, That’s a major one to me. Almost 20 years ago, I had control of every single T.V, DVD player, VCR, etc. That came my way thanks to the palm TX, it had IR and a nice little app where you’d just choose the make/model of the device you’re trying to control and bam, your screen became the remote you needed. Iirc the buttons also could be used so you didn’t necessarily have to do everything touch screen.

    Now on my super fancy modern smart phone I couldn’t dream of doing that. Hell, I even struggle to use it as a remote for my Roku because I use my device as a hotspot and Roku requires both devices be on the same network. Why can’t we figure out how to do what we did so easily 2 decades ago?!

    woodenskewer ,
    @woodenskewer@lemmy.world avatar

    I remember having to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS to have swipe down toggles we now know as normal today. It was called SB settings from cydia. I’m pretty sure this was also standard on Android. And file manager.

    Drewelite ,

    To this day whenever I hear people say Apple invented the smart phone I sigh. Maybe that’s technically true or not depending on how you want to count it. But what irks me is how people think it was brilliant. Like bro, I was browsing on the go with my Zune and PSP years before the iPhone came out. The only things we can thank Apple for are the two worst parts of a smart phone. Apps and the phone.

    Phen ,

    But jobs didn’t want apps on the iPhone, it was only planned for the iPad that would only come years later. He kind of got strong armed into putting it on the iPhone as well (and I doubt it would have been as successful as it did if Jobs had had his way)

    BallsInTheShredder ,

    Yes, Zune! Had one of those, a Palm TX and a PSP Design wise? Apart from cellular connectivity the Palm TX is pretty similar to an iPhone imo. More of an upgrade really, even though it released several years before the original iPhone.

    Had a built in stylus, 312 mhz processor, touch screen, Bluetooth, Infrared, Wifi, flip cover (which took smartphones a while to adapt to) 128 MB ram just like iPhone, 480×320 screen like iPhone, heck even a Nes emulator. It’s so similar that I really feel like Apple took note, even had its own Palm OS.

    And it releases 2+ years before the iPhone… if only they were hyped more and had access to cell networks.

    When the first iPhone released I paid virtually no attention bc I’d been having devices that did similar and more for a while already

    Heck the TX even had an App where you could select virtually any T.V and use it as a remote via IR, can’t do that shit on an iPhone even today

    Oh, and expandable storage via SD cards. Idk how we downgraded

    bemenaker , (edited )

    Android was not aimed at blackberry. It was to be a completely new phone OS from the ground up and add extensive capabilities to the phone world over what the blackberry (the most popular phone at the time) could. Yes the G1 had a similar form factor to the most popular phone at the time and it wasn’t even the only form. The phone in the picture was from prototype stage and never shipped in that form factor. The shipping go had a screen and button under it. The screen slid sideways to reveal a keyboard. The Motorola droid was the most popular android phone when they actually shipped. I had a droid and a coworker had a G1. Development problems and companies scared to gamble on a radical new product delayed Androids launch behind iPhones. Apple did a fantastic job of developing the iPhone in secret, knowing the Android was coming.

    AmyCupcake , in we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas

    The money from the fountain gets collected and sent to Caritas, a catholic charity that focuses on health, disaster relief, poverty, and migration. I am a Queer atheist person in Spain that uses their services and they haven’t once made my queerness an issue. Nor have they exposed me to their religious views.

    So, shrug, I’m not gonna shit on them doing the tradition that many diplomatic events in Rome do.

    DreadPirateShawn ,

    Objectively, it sounds like it’s an innocent tradition and a healthy charity.

    Subjectively, it’s tone-deaf af, when the rule-makers perform superstition for such a massive world-changing problem. Basically “thoughts and prayers.”

    MBM ,

    I can guarantee you that nobody did this with the idea it’d help fight climate change

    ehrenschwan ,

    +1 for Caritas. My mum, a non-religous person, worked for them for quite some time and I’ve never heard a bad thing from her.

    Pantoffel ,

    A friend once applied for a job at Caritas in Germany and got rejected for the reason of not being catholic, but christian. I think you could argue that is okay, but by German law it actually is not.

    TheFriendlyDickhead ,

    I realy don’t understand why the church still gets to do so many things that are simply not legal. It seems like the law that they have to follow is an older version.

    NathanielThomas ,

    My aunt works for Caritas in Germany. They do seem like they do good work, even if they believe in the whole resurrected vampire man who was birthed by a virgin and impregnated by a dude who flooded the world for fun.

    Syrc ,

    Wait what does Jesus have in common with vampires? I’ve always seen him represented more as a Zombie (?)

    NathanielThomas ,

    You’re right, zombie

    WhiskyTangoFoxtrot ,

    He’s a reverse-vampire. He makes other people drink his blood.

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