Yes. It would be necessary to live a modern life, given almost everything we use/eat comes from some unethical source. We abstain from the things that are important to us, according to our values. Lyrically if a song does not itself promote [terrible thing] then the music can be separated from an artist that does.

However if it is important to you that your listening does not generate income for those people, don’t listen to their music in apps (eg Spotify, who pays based on plays), nor on their official YT channels (which are likely monetised).

Also, be mindful that playing/listening to it around others is a form of ‘conspicuous consumption’, one of many ways our actions become ‘Word of Mouth’ advertising. This may lead others to believe you support the artists specifically, and depending on their values, they may be derisive or hostile. (Or, they agree with [terrible thing] and believe you are alike.)

Dual-weilding plushies

Yeah turns out it wasn’t anonymity, that was estimated because the internet has a greater amoun of dickery than real life.

But really, Assholes online are also assholes in real life. Same for kibd people. What the internet did was allow assholes find and network with each other, and make environment uncomfoetable enough that kind people leave. Only assholes are left.

Oh no, the mines will be so bad for my authentic supple human skin, and my favourite mammilian activity of breathing air

The reality is that a person in a cult leaves it quietly. At the start of the process, they have doubts and fears but repeat the mantras about how they’re still absolutely a member of the cult.

And we’re seeing that. We’re seeing people upset about what’s happening, yet claiming they still support him. That’s what a person leaving a cult actually looks like – doubt, self-assurance, and then quietly quesstioning it whilst acting to their peers that they’re still believers. They’re not necessarily aware that this is the beginning of them leaving, many want their leader to reassure them of those doubts, and get slowly unsettled when they don’t.

If you ask them point-blank if they renounce their faith, they’re not willing to admit it publicly. That’s too real. They’ll just slowly fade away, and try to live like it didn’t happen.

Which means if you want people to leave a cult, you have to let them do it quietly. Even if its hard, if you’re angry and want to punish them. If they’re giving up a community they know accepts them, it won’t be to join a community that never will.

Ahh, just normal body variance. Guess I’ve been brainwashed into expecting pitcher’s mitts lmao

I like em dashes. I learned the alt code for en and em dashes just so I could use them easily on a computer. There is a difference between a hypen and an en dash, and a double-hyphen is but a simulacrum of the em dash!

• Hyphen is just for double-barrelled words
• An en dash is useful – at least sometimes – for inserting side thoughts
• ah boy I sure hope an em dash doesn’t interrupt m—

But let’s be real, I type kinda formally, like an AI, sooo

This is absolutely a meaningless tangent but why do his hands look so small in this photo. I thought he was holding them tiny novelty hands at first.

Is this a focal length illusion? Am I just used to photos with a short focal distance and this is a zoomed shot or something?

Seems obvious to me that if you deport a lit of people, there are less people to deport. That’ll be a reason why so many justifications for deporting additional citizens.

Perhaps it’s likely that less people are entering the country now than were a year ago, what with the conditions there and all.

Cash is expensive for stores to manage, count, and sort. That’s the actual reason they want it gone, not tracking. Sure, we’re being tracked, but that’s not the point. Thanks to our phones, our personal lives have already been completely disseminated.

Cashless is about making things easier for businesses that struggle with handling cash. A cashless society acts like consuming goods from those businesses is the only reason money exists, and that’s wrong.

Cards themselves have been very useful. They’re much lighter and harder to steal money than carrying hundreds in cash in your pockets.

It’s cashless that is a concern, not the existence of cards.

What happens when an abused person has to escape a partner/parent who controls all the money? Where do they go, what food and board are they getting?

How do small traders set up garage sales and marketer stands, especially if they don’t want to give cuts of their money to corporate giants Eftpos and Visa?

How do those with impulsively/memory issues (such as ADHD, dementia, and teenagers) manage the abstraction of their money, leading them to accidentally overspending/overdrafts?

How do you spot a stranger in need a bus fare home?

How do we support the street artists and buskers?

…I don’t like the idea of cashless. My country already uses eftpos and visa as the norm (so ofc we all pay those overseas companies their fees). But while wide accepting of the card is good and useful, true cashless has issues of usability. It’s not just ‘something something government tracking spending’.

Vulnerable people fall through the gaps, and it means people make a lot more consumer transactions and a lot fewer personal ones.

And yet, those who want easy access to guns argue its to protect themselves from tyrannical power. They are also not doing that. Perhaps, in part, because the power disparity between military, police, and a civilian gun owner makes personal guns little more than display pieces.

Gun ownership is a hobby. Most of the dialogue around them is theater. Those who enjoy guns own far more than is needed for ‘defense’, because it’s enjoying ownership that they’re actually defending.

Phone proximity is used, so if your phone is in proximity to his, the algorythm can note a relationship between his interests and yours- or even the interests of people who also interact with him.

It’s possible his behaviour is learned from a narcissistic parent, or that enough of his customers are involved in learning about narcissism. OR you also mightve been at a Cafe near a clinic for long enough your phone tried to ping the office wifi, and you just noticed it because of your interactions with him.

Google also uses your relationships, so maybe a person you know is interested, or you watched a video about (blank) and a lot of those viewers also watched narcissism videos. Your brain is asking the connection to the contractor because it’s an intuitive logical leap.

Phones spy on us in a dozen different ways, mostly pattern recognition. They track location without GPS (by recording wifi pings), and track interests without the microphone. So they can claim they’re not tracking those specific things while still gathering scary amounts of data.

So a loan of $10 million has like $5mil taxed right away? You get $5mil to spend, and still owe the bank like $12mil? Those interest rates are insane, and will definitely affect the working class more than the ultra-wealthy. Specifically businesses, which will increase giants’ monopolies. And you can’t make businesses an exception, because then the ultra-wealthy will borrow through those.

The money is not the problem. Money isn’t real, it’s just a tool that represents power and resources. There’s nothing you can do to tax or control money itself because what wealthy people have is all the resources, and they can leverage them with or without money.

You can’t tax your way out of hierarchal Capitalism. The rich are paying as much tax as the current system legally asks of them - which is very little, when your wealth is in resources and not money.

The poor and workers are more affected by taxes and costs because most of our worth is in money. Once you have enough to start investing and have resources, your worth can grow rapidly.

Well if it doesn’t, sell your stock to yourself a la Elon Musk, who sold X at a loss to XAI (a company he also majority owns). The ‘loss’ of ~6bil in value (iirc) means he can now gain ~6bil from any other sources without paying gains tax.

Billionaires technically don’t have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.

The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don’t have much of anything, and the reason why ‘declining to take a salary’ is typically meaningless.

This feels like somebody tried to recreate and taxidermy a dog after somebody swapped the skull for a crocodiles.

Neat.