Sleeping rough is eye opening. But the folks closest to the atrocities are inevitably the ones who have the least power to stop them.
Only remedy for that situation is the kind of mass organizing of the lumpen proles that hasn’t seriously happened since the 70s/80s. Thanks to mass surveillance, brutal policing, and a corporate state increasingly run by algorithms, its harder and harder to see a world in which a mass movement can emerge again.
Doesn’t mean folks shouldn’t try. After 40 years of digging our own graves, we’re in one hell of a hole. But the only way out is to start climbing.
Oh it’s definitely worse. If it was Trump, Ukraine would be lost by now, and the Gaza war would be over (because there would be no survival left, population: 0).
The population of Gaza wouldn’t be 0, it would be quite populated with zionists trying to build tourist destinations upon the burning rubble and bodies in mass graves. Because aside from genocide, that’s the real goal here.
And you think that would be different under Trump?
Trump and Bibi are besties. There wouldn’t even be the token resistance Biden puts up; he’d hand Israel enough weapons to turn Gaza into a glass parking lot, and probably would have done the same to Columbia by now.
The thing about it is, Biden can be pressured to, eventually, take steps towards the right thing. Trump cannot; he already sees everyone but himself and his bootlickers as subhuman anyway.
Who’s the president right now? Wonder what he’s up to. Wonder if he’s fixing this. Wonder if he’s anything better than the capitalistic fascist of American conservatism.
Well if the supreme Court will give presidents immunity prior November, so that Trump can participate, then Biden just has to order a hit on him. because, you know presidents are immune… Problem solved
I wish we had better civics classes in schools. It would be nice to skip past all the 13-year-olds’ spicy takes on why this judge is somehow Biden’s fault.
I get that social media seems to be a constant stream of outrage with nobody actually caring, but I think this story might actually derail her.
There are articles in Fox News, NY Post, and other conservative media outlets about this. They are fairly critical. The fox news one includes tweets from a “country boy” who is like “there’s a difference between taking an old animal out back and a fucking puppy”.
I saw the movie ‘Enter The Dragon’ in theaters dozens of times back when grind houses were a thing. Every time some thug got killed the crowd cheered. The minute the villain threatened to kill his own cat people were horrified.
people don’t like thugs. thugs are dangerous and bad for society. so social creatures like humans naturally cheer them getting creamed. baby animals that are pets? hint: one thing isn’t a different thing. context. it’s what gives meaning.
Humans are sapient, while some other animals can claim the same title as well most cant. Humans can be introspective but most animals fundamentally cannot, there are lots of good reason to kill a human animals should only be killed for food or necessity.
What does physical or chemical castration even mean? And why is this a punishment when he is 100 years old?
Also, under current law there, no abortions are allowed unless life of mother is at risk, so they will castrate the rapist but force the mother to give birth?
Well, it's because he's an old fuck already so his heinous crimes result in him spending the rest of his worthless life in prison. If he's lucky, he'll die before he reaches 100.
But that’s the whole point of a fair justice system. It doesn’t respond to people’s personal feelings or emotional arguments. It is based on concepts like cruel punishments should not be meted out regardless of the circumstances.
Should the justice system be about vengeance? I don’t think it should. I don’t think an atrocious crime deserves an atrocious governmental response.
chemical castration … is basically using medication to block hormones that cause sex drives. (edit for technical accuracy as was pointed out below. Either way they’re taking medically-approved bolt cutters to his junk. and that’s never right at any age.)
I hear you, thanks I didn’t even realize that could be an actual punishment , especially in a state like Louisiana that doesn’t allow abortion in cases of rape
Apparently castration means a few things. In China the eunuchs were castrated and they typically had both penis and testicles removed.
Just learned that yesterday and kinda wish I didn’t.
chemical castration … is basically using medication to block hormones that cause sex drives.
The fun part is that it doesn’t even do that. You can block all of your testosterone (as an XY male), and still desire sex, have erections, and achieve orgasms. It’s difficult, but still possible. And unless they’re going to do blood panels every month, it’s pretty easy to get around that shit, if you have the money for the black market drugs.
What does physical or chemical castration even mean?
Physical castration is being neutered, aka what we routinely due to male animals we don’t intend to breed.
Chemical castration is essentially being chemically neutered - hormone blockers. Whenever you see someone anti-trans talk about pro-trans people wanting to chemically castrate children that’s why - it’s the same drugs being used to achieve the same effect - blocking sex hormones.
And why is this a punishment when he is 100 years old?
Because castration in LA is only performed in the final week of the prison sentence (presumably because it can’t be reversed so as to allow time for appeals), he was in his 50s when convicted and was sentenced to 50 years + castration. So by the time he’s in the final week of his prison sentence he would be over 100 should he live that long.
Greco-Roman usage was complex. They would use it as a political weapon to disinherit rivals and as a means of “ending their line” among other things, criminal punishment, weird sex shit, etc.
I think mutilating political opponents would still fall under reproductive prevention. The article states that blinding was the common form of punitive mutilation.
The important bit here is the eugenics angle. Which was a Nazi (and American…) thing.
Unless you think OP is more concerned with trying to eliminate political rivals instead of worrying about the gene pool? Possible, I suppose. Cut the MAGA off at the twig and berries.
The fact that refusing to vaccinate a healthy child isn’t grounds for having that child taken away by CPS makes me question the ‘protection’ part of CPS.
Their “heritage” lasted five years. The Obama Administration lasted eight years. The Obama Administration is more of the South’s heritage than the Confederacy.
But if you want to celebrate some actual Mississippi heritage, celebrate blues music. Oh wait- that was invented by those people.
High-speed rail funding, semiconductor factory funding… Why the fuck is Texas getting these federal perks when they’ve been fighting Biden the entire time?
Lol na, not a chance. Liberals who typically vote are middle class and if they could afford to leave Texas then they have. What’s left is poor democrats who can’t leave but don’t typically vote and if they do vote it’s for people like Bernie. They see Biden as Capitalist who couldn’t give a fuck about them so fat chance they are taking off work to vote for him.
To turn texas blue you would need an extremely progressive candidate and even Bernie wasn’t progressive enough.
Nah, I think partisan special treatment is exactly what we need more of. What could go wrong making eligibility for federal projects and funds contingent on the state being represented by the correct party.
Anyone that’s already “blue” you ignore, because they have no other options to vote for.
So you continually give preference to conservatives in the hopes you can pull some into the Democratic party. This pulls the Dem party more conservative and perpetuates the problem.
It’s pretty much why 1/3 of the country doesn’t vote, and the only time in modern history Dems ran a progressive campaign, we flipped a bunch of red states.
We can easily do that again, it’s not difficult. It’s just not the direction party leaders want to take the party. They’d rather lose elections than move left.
Everything I see in the news about how the dems are bending over backwards to please republicans leads me to believe that the senior democratic party members are genuinely just fucking stupid.
I guess that’s to be expected since half of them are like 300 years old, but it’s still really annoying to watch them just let democracy be destroyed for the sake of decorum.
It’s at least forty years of history. After Reagan ran the table in 84, the DNC caved utterly and completely and just about never recovered.
Just an endless stream of faceless, well coiffed men in khakis and oxfords blabbering about values or some shit. Such a pathetic run of losing that even against trump they dug deep and lost that one.
Important to specify how they caved - they capitulated to corporate interests, and started seeking bribe money in the form of political donations in return for political favors at this time.
Stupid, perhaps. But it’s important to realize they all live in the same bubble in DC, and thus experience the same groupthink. When Biden refers to his Republican colleagues as “his friends,” he genuinely means it. They hang out over food and happy hours, etc every day. They likely feel much closer bonds with each other than they do with their actual constituents back home.
This doesn’t fully explain why Dems are so bad at messaging and politics in general, but I think it’s a big contributor.
Yeah, I definitely feel more comfortable trusting a random, terminally online Lemmy user who’s oddly concerned with one metric over the ton of diverse statistics provided in the video. One might wonder why you’re so skeptical about the channel.
Also, I don’t think New Mexico is your best go-to example (or you just don’t understand the data and thought “biggest number goodest”), since West Virginia for example has a return of 26 cents on every dollar, and since New Mexico is the second-most federally dependent state in the nation, providing the second least tax contribution in return for its federal funding in the nation. For every $1 it pays in federal taxes, it receives $3.26 in federal funding, so of course it’s going to have one of the highest local returns on the tax dollars it pays. In terms of states that actually contribute to the nation, New Mexico is one of the worst examples.
But hey, it’s blue right, and that makes it a good state, as opposed to Texas, which must therefore be bad in every conceivable metric in order for our tribalist, reductionist viewpoint to make any sense, eh?
I don’t agree with the way that Texas is currently being run economically, but that doesn’t change the fact that its enormous, booming economy provides a huge net surplus to the nation given its GDP, and that it therefore more than warrants this sort of investment from the federal government.
I am a “terminally online Lemmy user” because I am very sick. I just got back from the Mayo Clinic a couple of weeks ago. I don’t get out much. I’m sorry that offends you.
Yeah, why bother contributing to the conversation and potentially educating yourself when you can just fall back on getting offended and playing the victim instead!
The only reason I framed my comment the way I did was because of your flippant, entirely unjustified attack on RLL’s credibility, and therefore on me for being dumb enough to be so easily duped by them. I suppose I should be equally sorry that approachable, informative content offends you, but then, I’m not the one that insults people and then gets all offended when the energy I brought to the conversation is matched by my interlocutor.
Edit in response to your edit:
I’m getting really tired of explaining this.
Seems like this behavior of making intentionally antagonizing statements and then playing the victim is reoccurring behavior on your part then. Might want to take a step back and re-evaluate.
3rd world countries have more reliable power grids than Texas. Texas the only state where you can just freeze to death if you have a few cold days because the power grid is so shit.
That has very little real impact on Texas’ import or value, especially when events like the ones in question are incredibly rare. I’m happy to have a critical conversation about how Texas’ energy policy is hurting its citizens and is ultimately self-defeating, but even if Texas had widespread, daily rolling blackouts it wouldn’t change the fact that it’s demonstrably the most important and valuable state at the moment.
That’s like me arguing that bitcoin isn’t the most important and valuable cryptocurrency by pointing out how much energy it uses and how horrible it is for the environment - that’s also true, but has very little to do with the conversation at hand.
I mean you are just factually wrong about Texas being the most valuable and important state. Come talk to me when Texas is the is the 5th largest economy in the world like California. Come talk to me when Texas isn’t violating human rights.
Texas isn’t valuable or important and is on the verge of collapse as people are moving out in droves.
“Sorry I didn’t circlejerk” they sniff with superiority as they bravely parrot “blue state good, red state bad” in [email protected]. Yet again, however, this conversation isn’t about which state is good and which state is bad - it’s about which is more important and valuable, and in both cases, the clear answer is Texas.
You’re correct that it’s not currently the largest state economy (Texas would be the 8th largest economy in the world), but you’re ignoring the fact that Texas’s economy and population is growing much faster than California’s (whose population is currently shrinking), which is the relevant metric here, fueled by its natural resource wealth, strategic position, and appealing location for both public and private investment. In the long term, Texas is currently significantly more valuable than California is, and is on track to eclipse its sister state in both economic size and population in the next decade or so.
That has nothing to do with whether this is a good thing or not, of course, but it is a demonstrable fact.
Come talk to me when Texas isn’t violating human rights.
Come talk to me when you can separate your performative moral outrage from a conversation it’s not even relevant to.
Texas isn’t valuable or important and is on the verge of collapse as people are moving out in droves.
Unfortunately, you being real, real mad at the big meanie red state doesn’t change the fact that Texas is seeing an economic and population boom that hasn’t been seen in the US in decades. And while it’s certainly possible that their deeply unpopular policies may inhibit this growth somewhat, that hasn’t been borne out by the data (yet).
Yup, I’m so outed by my… citing mainstream sources supporting completely uncontroversial and widely accepted facts, which “MAGA chuds” are well known to do, of course. rolls eyes
Y’all really need to chill on the tribalism bullshit here for a second or so, hey?
It’s Texas, the chances they know more about Oswald than he shot Kennedy are pretty low. At the rate they’re going communism won’t even be in the text book
For the same reason people should “have to” resort to anything else they don’t want that everyone else is fine with. You don’t get to choose for society as a whole.
If you don’t want to eat inspected meat, fine. Go raise or hunt your own.
That’s a loaded question because people do not suffer without fluoridated water.
Do you want to explain how they suffer without fluoridated water? That way you’re talking specifics that can actually be debated upon instead of generalities where people need to make your arguments for you.
The addition of fluoride (fluoridation) to drinking water that is low in fluoride or the use of fluoride toothpaste and supplements significantly reduces the risk of tooth decay.
Jeez, you really can’t read, can you?
I don’t expect you to be capable of making worthwhile arguments, so I’m just going to end this here.
The point is that there are people that cannot regularly afford fluoridated toothpaste or for some other legitimate reason cannot brush their teeth as often as is recommended. Fluoridated water is the best and only dental care many Americans get, and it doesn’t carry any harms that are even meaningfully measurable.
The epidemiological data shows that even people with adequate dental hygiene and healthcare access benefit from fluoridated water. Communities with fluoridated water have lower rates of tooth decay and associated oral diseases across all socioeconomic strata.
Which leads to the question, and its an honest question and I would benefit from the honest answer: If I can do the job hybrid, why can I not do the job remote? Is it because you needed me to move some paper boxes to the printer?
In my 20 years of working in the office and an additional 4 working 100% WFH, I’ll throw my worthless internet opinion out there as to why: It comes down to the culture of the company.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations, face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment’s notice to do things. There is also a lack of trust in the employees being able to perform correctly without physical oversight in many companies. Granted and aside from the trust issue, there is some truth to that, but can in fact be realigned with the exact same benefit by retooling communications. It’s up to each company however to formulate the best course of action to remedy that and many sadly fail, resulting in RTO mandates.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations
There are real benefits to water cooler spontaneous talk. However, they don’t overcome the detriments to having all your staff commute all the time on the off chance one will occur to produce a positive result.
face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment’s notice to do things.
These are largely dead in hybrid scenarios, because those that would be meeting face to face don’t work in the office on the same day. So the practical result to hybrid is the worker loses productivity from the commute to come into the office for one or two days an sits at a desk alone all day in video meetings with their coworkers just like they’d do at home. The next day their coworker does the same while the original worker is WFH that day.
Yep, I get that. I’m responding to that point-of-view of those companies, and how I believe its in error. I have nothing against the poster or their comments.
These are largely dead in hybrid scenarios, because those that would be meeting face to face don’t work in the office on the same day.
I work at an office that started hybrid after covid because enough employees quit when they went to full RTO. The IT department ended up with 2 days in and 3 days remote, but the 2 days are the same for everyone so that we are all in the office at the same time for the spontaneous conversations.
It works pretty well. 2 days to collaborate and keep up relationships, the other three days to get individually completed work done.
Water tank conversations really fuck with remote workers because they are always missing something, but if you can manage to redirect all work talk to happen in whatever communication tool the company uses, everyone tends to work better in the end, as nobody misses anything. But the only way I’ve seen companies successfully do this is by adopting remote-first approaches - when people only go to the office like once a month if even that.
The thing is, water cooler chats are impromptu, they are not planned. You meet your colleague, you talk about the weather, what’s new in his life, and one thing leads to another, to maybe to talk about work and how to strategise to get something done.
These impromptu conversations happen on a whim, they happen organically. They cannot be forced.
Sometimes Alice needs coffee while Bob is using the microwave, and sometimes Bob and Alice do more than say hi, and sometimes that leads to a productive work conversation.
Carol and Dave do not need spontaneous small talk to be productive.
This makes Grace very angry. Carol and Dave are ordered to be more like Alice and Bob.
Carol and Dave do not understand this, and vent to their friend Frank. Frank says that he sees this happen a lot, and suggests that they come to work for his boss, Oscar, instead. Carol and Dave give their two weeks notice to Grace.
This makes Grace very angry. Alice and Bob agree that it is an outrage, then go back to discussing the previous night’s sporting event.
Wendy is given Carol and Dave’s workload and doesn’t have time to join Alice and Bob at the water cooler. Wendy keeps falling further and further behind.
This makes Grace very angry. “No one wants to work anymore!”
The point is not to force those talks to happen, the point is to make them not happen in a limited way. In an office what usually happens is people talking to other specific people about problems they are facing, by going to their desk or catching them on the coffee room. This should absolutely never happen. Any work talk should always be accessible to everyone involved. I don’t mean the whole company, but if there’s 5 people in a project, there should never be any private conversation between just two of them - even if others don’t join the talk they should always know the conversation is happening.
Yes, I agree, it has to be fair for everyone. What I’m talking about is instinctive, primal behaviour that we can’t control because we’re social animals and when we meet we naturally have a discussion with the person we’re talking to and we might end up talking about the project without taking into account our colleagues far away from the office.
There are some aituations for some roles where meeting in person is necessary for trust and connections to be established. Being in person lets a lot of people feel a better connection with teammates, because humans are animals and that is just how it works.
This is nit true for every role, and is mostly for roles that have to work with people whose primary jobs are interpersonal or connection making like executives and leadership.
It does not really apply to roles where deliverables are already spelled out and information exchangenis formalized and you don’t need to convince someone to do something ad hoc. Plus some people do just fine doing all of those things remotely, but they have to work with people who don’t.
No, a lot of people just feel more trust from being in the same room with someone and getting a better feeling from being in proximity with the person. It has nothig to do with on and off the record. Do you really record all of your zoom calls to CYA?
Think of it like attending a concert in person compared to listening to an album, it is just a different experience in person. Not everyone gets that out of in person interactions, but a lot of people do.
As someone who works hybrid and frequently has both in person and online meetings that are rarely if ever recorded, no I don’t see that as the default expectation.
I can see that it could be, if the people I was interacting with were evil and untrustworthy, but that wouldn’t be a job I would stick with for any length of time. What I have seen is that quite a few people just work better with others if they meet in person occasionally.
There is a reason that a lot of knowledge work has conferences to share knowledge in person.
That is just putting everyone into extreme ends of social interaction when the vast, vast majority of people are somewhere in between. Even the most extroverted people I work with like some human interaction, just less than the more social people. I don’t work with anyone in an IT setting who fits the extremes you are describing, although I have met them.
Coaching newbies doesn’t work that well remotely, so you’ll have to be at the office more for them to ask you questions, otherwise they’re stuck in the simplest things for days.
When the company where I was managing a small team went full remote during COVID, I had 0 issues with my existing staff, but when I had to hire, that was definitely less than ideal for onboarding. We still made it work but it was nothing like the in-office onboardings from before. There are solutions though, you can do virtual sit-togethers, and if you’re reactive to slack/etc you can be even more present for them than in-person, but it felt uneasy for sure the first times. Left all corporate behind now and running a one man business so don’t need to care about this.
That’s the line my CEO used, but we had plenty of hires join during COVID that have excelled while here, with lots of talented engineers that had to leave because they were forced to an office hundreds of miles away.
Personal experience. The juniors just out of school and interns are invariably stuck in something trivial that can often be solved with looking at their stuff for a few seconds. They don’t dare to disturb you with any questions and need a lot of explaining. Doing all the explaining through the screen is a pain and you have to hound them with calls to get them to ask questions.
Experienced new hires don’t have that issue. They can Google stuff, read a manual and know when to send a message for a blocking issue.
That’s doesn’t mean send everybody to the office. Just the new guy and the coach should be enough in most cases and reduce the presence as they hit their stride.
The juniors just out of school and interns are invariably stuck in something trivial that can often be solved with looking at their stuff for a few seconds.
If only there were a way to share your screen remotely…
Yeah sorry but that’s not the same. Efficient teaching is very highly dependent on nonverbal cues to properly align yourself to the person you’re teaching to. On top of that screen sharing software is clunky and necessarily has latency, which makes interrupting much more disruptive which is most detrimental when there needs to be a bidirectional high-throughput stream of information.
Efficient teaching is very highly dependent on nonverbal cues to properly align yourself to the person you’re teaching to.
I would say that is highly dependent on the type of learner you are.
My daughter is in online school right now. Her teachers usually can’t see her because most of them don’t require her to have her camera on. She often can’t see them because she’s doing screen sharing. She’s getting better grades than she’s ever had before.
On top of that screen sharing software is clunky and necessarily has latency
I don’t know when the last time you used it was, but this is just not true anymore. It’s as easy as clicking ‘share screen’ in Zoom or Google Meet and the latency is so low that it’s essentially not noticeable.
I work 80 % remotely, I know what I’m talking about. MS Teams is by far the worst latency-wise, but even on the best software you can’t get over the fact that there will be a 200-300 ms jitter buffer.
Ever had the “yeah I- so we - OK go ahea- sorry -”? That’s what I’m talking about.
Good on your daughter if she learns well remotely, but literally everyone I’ve talked to who was in education during COVID had an awful experience. Although I suppose in the school system it doesn’t matter as much since with 20-600 students per teacher there’s not much back-and-forth going on anyway.
Remote work is great for focusing, it’s great for async workflows (slack/discord/email/jira), it’s great for solo work, but it’s just plain inferior for certain highly collaborative workflows like 1-on-1 teaching. There’s enough good reasons to work remotely that we don’t have to lie about the rest.
Ever had the “yeah I- so we - OK go ahea- sorry -”? That’s what I’m talking about.
You mean the exact same thing that has happened with telephones since the 19th century?
I don’t know how old you are, but I am guessing anyone here over 40 can tell you about how the training they were given was “read this book and get started” more than once.
Right, and last I checked people weren’t remote working too much before the 21st century.
If your job doesn’t want to train you properly that’s on them, but assuming all parties involved are acting in good faith I will always go to the office to train a junior employee.
I think that might depend on who you’re hiring though. That’s the same line our boss told me when they pushed me back to the office. But in the time since then, we have hired several new staff who actually prefer to communicate digitally. They will email, teams, phone, or text me with questions before actually seeking me out in person.
I thought this until I’ve actually done it a few times, and been that newbie at a remote first employer.
The difference in being on boarded at a company which embraces remote vs one that is still hedging, is massive.
It can be done well.
Yes the extroverts might get fidgety, but they can schedule a meeting or body doubling session or something. We introverts have had to adjust to office work for the last century; let’s see y’all do a bit of that labour for another, better way to do info work now :p
Tax breaks from cities saying they have X employees working in city Y and they bought a bunch of commercial real estate that is worthless or needs to be converted to residential. They gambled and lost and now want to either say they didn’t lose or subsidize their losses to employees & taxpayers.
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