Ddubz

Ddubz , 10 months ago

Only if you sincerely think that punching down at overweight Americans eating Debbie Cakes is an accurate criticism of anything worthwhile.

Try listening to Sturgil Simpson Turtles all the Way Down instead. Or Holy Shit by Father John Misty.

Or if you just want to listen to newer bluegrass and country/western that isn’t astroturfed by wealthy capitalists or white nationalist influencers, you can check out Tyler Childers - the entire album Ballad of Janita and the Dood is a masterpiece. Michael Davies is also an incredible musician and vocalist that “Oliver Anthony” could never be.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

This is the correct perspective. As it turns out, a huge amount of people that believe Bill Gates is injecting 5G chips into people absolutely don’t vote. If you recall, the first amendment nuts in the loser convoys and a bunch of the J6 defendants weren’t even registered to vote and yet they screeched election interference. For an election they didn’t even bother to vote in.

2020 was one of the highest blue voter turnouts in national history making record first time voters in their 30s and 40s.

So yes, it should be pointed out that everyday people turning out to vote against this brain rot is just as important whether or not magats and human vegetables are voting too.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

People at the doctor’s office that get too shit of a mobile signal on their phone in the waiting room to look at anything else.

That and Gen X, boomer democrats that don’t think Bush Jr. is that bad of a guy.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

In my observation it has been industry and sector dependent.

Corporate tech and finance are calling for remote work to end. Most of the articles I see where going back to the office is touted are all “silicon valley” type companies and finance/investment firms writing opinion peices.

PR, marketing, and news media, comms fields - which I am in - are doing the opposite. I work in digital media with government clients and my office just had a building contractor come in and walled off 2/3 of our empty cube space that was full pre-pandemic but is now vacant because all those employees remained remote. The positions in that area of the office were mostly copy editors, graphic design, and technical writers. The building owner turned that area into a new office but hasn’t rented it to anyone new yet.

Many of my colleagues are active duty military and government civilians. They all telework as much as 3-4 days a week currently. All of their jobs are administrative in nature and almost all of the military people are officers.

It is important to note that the military has loosely instructed liberal telework at unit level discretion because of record low retention rates. I’ve been working in/for government for a long time and even before 2020, federal contractors and DoD civilians have usually had telework of some kind provided what they did was something that could be taken home.

When I worked in DC in the mid-00s it was common to see offices engage rotating flex schedules because of the insane traffic and hours long commutes in the DMV corridor.

But, I suppose it’s all anecdotal. Where you live and what you do for work are going to impact reality more than anything. Watching the MSM speculate and reading nonsense opinion articles in the Atlantic or Times aren’t going to give you any real information.

All I can say for sure is my office has fully remote and hybrid only. We are guaranteed two days WFH a week but all salaried employees have optional flex schedules and can work non-concurrent hours as long as deadlines are being met. But again, I work for a massive international fed contractor that does largely administrative and PR consulting. So all things that have a history of WFH schedules already.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

The one person I know that still watches Bill Maher is a guy that says he’s a libertarian. But he’s a libertarian in the way that a college freshman in 2005 was a libertarian.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

While I totally agree with you, this meme isn’t referring to college text books. It’s referring to school supplies and clothes for elementary school children.

The vast majority of public schools in the US are severely underfunded and don’t have enough supplies like markers, disinfectant, crayons, pencils, etc to provide kids and teachers don’t make very much money, yet they often come out of pocket to buy supplies. What has happened as a result, is parents have to purchase many of these supplies to send to school with their kids for the whole classroom to have the items they need. I have three kids in kindergarten and second grade. Their school supply lists were about $150 each. With creative shopping for sales, we managed to get everything about $150 cheaper than listed. We are waiting for the tax-free weekend to buy clothes for all of them.

Gotta love the good ol’ US of A and it’s hatred of the poors.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

One of the more mischievous kids in my third grade class was the son of the high school chem teacher. He purchased a chemistry set at the book fair that year. He and another kid took it into the bathroom by the cafeteria and drank a few “experiments” from the kit in the box. They both got violently sick and an ambulance came. I’m really glad I stuck with my Box Car Children collection and Calvin and Hobbes book mark that year.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

Yup. Ours had some really expensive hobby items in addition to the books and book accessories. They had a rock tumbler kit one year I remember wanting really bad. My grandparents ended up getting me one for Christmas. I recall a telescope one year as well.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

I’d argue the opposite. People have been fed up with the mainstream platforms for a long time now. Now that we know how social media grew grassroots terrorism and that the platforms allowed it for ad clicks, I’d say it’s a good time to pivot away from the traditional models of the last 15-20 years, move away from the Facebooks and Twitters, and try something new.

Professionally, I lead a team of digital artists and oversee digital marketing efforts for a government client. The chaos and burning out of Twitter and Reddit has been a great time for my team as we’ve finally been given the latitude to do new work and build new strategies instead of just doing the same bullshit over and over. I’ve started enjoying work again and my team has been energized because everyday there’s something new to overcome. And because the social media ecosystem is so turbulent, it’s actually removing the pressure from us because our client understands that we are operating in new territory. Essentially, we are being allowed to fail in the pursuit of innovation.

I’m pumped to be a part of this evolving shift. There’s so much potential. Also, I’m selfishly enjoying watching these fucking assholes like Musk flail and burn through billions of dollars as a result of their hubris.

Ddubz , 10 months ago

Dumping Twitter, to start. We’ve been able to finally get our client to try some new things using IG reels and YT shorts. We’ve also been able to grab their ear about Reddit, Lemmy, and Mastodon. While they’re not fully onboard yet with federated platforms, they’re interested, which is a huge step. We’ve also been pitching more proactive content and getting more support on strategy shifts to have a more conversational back-and-forth with the client’s audience. They used to prefer to get people off open comments and into private DMs. We have been pushing them to be more transparent and human with their direct engagement.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Considering many cousinfucker school districts all across the US are trying to abolish social and cultural learning and all access to political science. I’d say a governor taking a stand and making it clear anti-education curriculums won’t be tolerated, is a pretty big deal.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Honestly, you should check out Nelly’s Nest. Some of the simultaneously most disturbing and inspiring comics on the internet.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Exactly. LinkedIn jobs is incredibly useful. I have also found it useful for helping friends and colleagues find new jobs or make career switches because of the connections I have. I only maintain work connections through LinkedIn as I don’t use Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Absolutely, ignore the post feed. It’s just capitalist boot fucking. A bunch of fucking losers with made up bullshit in their titles trying to be leadership influencers.

I sincerely vouch for the jobs function, though.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Sure, but how else is Elmo going to keep Amazon and Google from suing him for nonpayment? Geez man, use your noodle.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

They’re not. They’re responding to your first idiotic comment with a rational one.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

This is extremely interesting. So many products that I’ve never heard of and many of them were actually around for 6-12 years before being axed or coming up on death soon. A lot of these I had heard of and even used occasionally over the years and I didn’t realize were gone now.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Agreed. Sorting by top 6 1/2 hours works very well for me.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Agreed, and not only that but holy fuck we just broke up a week ago. I was in a relationship with that bitch for 12 years, I don’t need my homies over here telling me it’s time to forget about it lol

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Are you fucking serious? Do you genuinely not know who Chaya Raichik is? Because if you’re acting in good faith and actually aren’t aware of the vile hatred and harassment orchestrated at her hands, you really need to drop her name in the old Google machine and do some reading.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Yep. That was the organization exodus for my last job. Without any warning or planning, a state government agency, demanded everyone come back first week June 2021 when not a single other state office was even considering it. It was way out of left field and threatened to completely fuck up many people’s lives and there was a mass exodus. Staff left agency wide. I think it was somewhere around 300 employees of a several thousand. Which may not seem like that much, but when 300 people quit in one agency over the course of two weeks, it’s extremely noticable lol. The leadership at the top got berated publicly by the governor and they had to reverse course to stop people from leaving. But hey, I got a promotion, a huge raise, and got to demand my telework schedule because I instantly became more important hahaha.

The next exodus was my specific division. The deputy director we all liked and the media relations manager we all liked were fired out of nowhere by the same agency leadership that fucked up in the telework debacle. They placed their own drones in the two spots and it absolutely decimated morale. Not to mention the stool pigeons they selected are two of the most incompetent people I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with. I took a high-paying job with a federal contractor and bounced. Four people left in the few months following. They hired new people, two of which left within three months. I still talk to the social media manager who’s still there and she fills me in on all the bullshit they’re continuing with. Out of a public affairs division of 14 people, there’s only six still there that were there when I left last September.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Make it five. I nuked 12, 8, and 5 year old accounts. In all three I had comments that used to be linked in Google search results. I put up with a lot from Reddit admin over the years, but it just simply wasn’t worth it anymore, and fuck them, they’re not gonna reap the benefits from Google traffic on my old accounts. I scrubbed and deleted my Twitter account a couple days ago as well. I’m sick and tired of these rich, stupid clownshoes ruining everything. This fediverse stuff is legit. I’m genuinely invested in seeing decentralized social media succeed.

Sure, Reddit and Twitter aren’t going to collapse because some power users killed their accounts, but Lemmy and Mastadon can grow and show that what they’re doing works if myself and others are making an effort to participate.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Look up whathowwhy on YouTube. He’s a dude from the UK who puts stuff into epoxy. A few years a go he put a hotdog into a cube of epoxy and would do periodic video updates on the hotdog. One year I actually watched the New Years Eve livestream of the hotdog slowly spinning on a dias. He’d put a little party hat on it and the live chat was absolutely hilarious.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

Same. I’m just as much of a talky talkerson here as I was on Reddit. It does feel different here, because it’s new and exciting…and its a functional platform lol. But I commented consistently every day on reddit for years. If I was taking a shit, blowing time somewhere, or waiting for something, I was there chatting it up. Overall nothing has changed for me in terms of participation frequency. I’m gonna fuck off here too.

Ddubz , 11 months ago

It’s honestly extremely humorous. I made a Twitter account in 2015 because it was a requirement for a emergency management crisis communications class I was taking for work. After the course ended I didn’t log into it again until Musk bought Twitter. I knew it was going to be a hilarious dumpster fire and wanted to watch it melt down in real time. It hasn’t disappointed. But this most recent thing about the rate limits is so hilariously dumb I figured I’d seen enough. Deleted the app off my phone yesterday.

As you point out, Twitter’s death is going to mean a huge improvement to journalism. Someone on Lemmy mentioned yesterday how nice it is to not be on Reddit which had gotten to be like 80% Twitter screenshots. Twitter and Reddit diving like this at the same time is going to be a net positive.