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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • I get the thrust of the song, but I have a question for you and/or anyone else who has insight:

    I make small aggressions, like OP, where I assume I’m costing a corpo and giving to an artist through it, even if minuscule.

    Examples:

    Similar to OP, I have a streaming service ‘downloaded’ playlist of songs I like. I tend to leave my PC playing them in shuffle/repeat during my workday. I might have my volume on or off depending on my level of focus, but I can’t see how that “engagement” doesn’t benefit the artist without costing me anything – maybe a smidge more electricity.

    Since I saw The Spiffing Brit’s runtime video, I no longer close a youtube tab if I decide I want something else. I mute the tab, set the speed to .25 and ignore it for a while. Costs me electricity, not that much bandwidth, and presumably pays the channel more than usual. Maybe fucks with analytics per-video, but probably not enough to bother the creator, and if it fucks with ‘the algorithm’ and pushes people to channels I already like, then that’s a google problem.

    I also have an Epic Games account, where I “buy” every single free game. I assume these have either already paid the developer a fixed fee for supporting development, or are paying based on sales volume. Either way, they presumably paid money to be able to offer these as a loss-leader. Most are games I would not have bought anyway, so I’m not costing the developer a potential sale and I will never buy anything through Epic games, so it should be just a loss. I actually want insight on this one, in case there are devs/publishers here. If this costs you when I buy your free game, there might be others like me who just need to know we’re not helping.

    Aside from the fact that my engagement with these platforms could be used as leverage (’ we have X million active users…'), I can’t see any negative to my attacks on them. It’s possible the artists can’t perceive it, but if the corpos love it, they wouldn’t make me pass a CAPTCHA to buy a game.

    The question, then, is: Am I hurting the artists, or helping them?


  • This. We’ve seen what republicans want to do. We need to stop them and vote ‘not-republican’ when we can before the ability to do so is gone. The problem is we cannot stop there and only vote every 2-4 years for the least-bad option, we need to make better options. “Both sides” is reductive and hides the problem.

    Get involved: find and support people who have your views for all offices: city, county, state, federal, maybe even HOA. Most of these are important. If the incumbent is not working for us, we need to fight them and suggest someone better. If the incumbent is unchallenged, then that’s a travesty and they need a primary, if the same party, or an opponent.

    For the a while now we’ve seen the ‘left’ chase the ‘center’ and people like OP are mad at this. The solution is not ‘vote blue no matter who’, but that is a bandage to slow the bleeding and will resonate with the less-involved allies we have. The solution is to prove that we are the majority and push our own into leadership roles where they can make things better.

    If you’re angry right now, run for office or canvas for someone who is. Being mad, depressed or just bitching online isn’t fixing anything. You can make things better, and it starts with finding a ‘blue’ worth voting for.



  • Like many things, a tool is only as smart as the wielder. There’s still a ton of critical thinking that needs to happen as you do something as simple as bake bread. Using an AI tool to suggest ingredients can be useful from a creative perspective, but should not be assumed accurate at face value. Raisins and Dill? maybe ¯\(ツ)/¯, haven’t tried that one myself.

    I like AI, for being able to add detail to things or act as a muse, but it cannot be trusted for anything important. This is why I’m ‘anti-AI’. Too many people (especially in leadership roles) see this tool as a solution for replacing expensive humans with something that ‘does the thinking’; but as we’ve seen elsewhere in this thread, AI CANT THINK. It only suggests items that are statistically likely to be next/near based on its input.

    In the Security Operations space, we have a phrase “trust but verify”. For anything AI, I would use 'doubt, then verify" instead. That all said. AI might very well give you a pointer to the place to ask how much motrin an infant should get. Hopefully, that’s your local pediatrician.



  • As a description of the levels of power I personally have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

    I’m still at ballot box myself.

    “Yelling at strangers [on the internet]” is the Soap Box, and while we’re pretty well past that as a country due to social media echo chambers and the like, it’s still useful. If there’s enough social pressure on a given topic, we can change policy. At the very least, being vocal (including online) lets other people know they are not alone.

    I believe that we have effectively lost the jury box at this time. The supreme court seems to have abandoned rationality in a variety of cases to-date, and even in a best case, the judicial system works far too slowly compared to how fast new bullshit gets thrown at them by the current executive. Not to mention the cost to an individual average voter to try and sue would be prohibitive. Groups like SPLC and ACLU are helping here, but see point 2 (too slow).

    I don’t need to defend myself, but I have voted in every municipal election I’ve been able to since my early twenties in 2004. About the only way I haven’t used my power here is by running myself, but I don’t think I’m qualified for public office and would only siphon money from someone better who might win.

    That leaves us with the ammo box. For progressives in solidly blue states, whose votes were counted, but ultimately found irrelevant, this is the next step, hence firebombing tesla dealerships (Can’t find a recent walmart news article, but the idea is still there). In my purple state, I’m in my local precinct org and canvassing, but that doesn’t really help when the margin of victory for your party is like 20%.

    I will acknowledge the point that Americans – in general – are apathetic. I have a significant amount of distaste for anyone who says they are ‘not political’ or who didn’t vote in 2024 or earlier. Sometimes though, you get a wake-up call after the fact. Anyone who didn’t vote or voted for trump in 2024, but is now pissed off has been awakened (dare I say, “woke”) and that should be celebrated, not derided. I love the leopards-eating-faces memes, but we really need to be reaching out to these people instead of mocking them. There is now a chink in their ignorance-armor.

    You got a lot of anger in responses to your posts in this thread. The ‘in general’ phrase carries a lot of weight, but isn’t all that applicable here. This community is likely to be like me and very involved or at least informed. Phrases like “You are all at fault…” is going to raise hackles, even when clarified by ‘proportional to your share of power that you didn’t use.’


  • I’m trying to understand this point. I’m in a purple state. By definition, that means that we’re on the cusp of being either democratic EC votes or republican EC votes, as well as senators, governors and other state-level offices.

    One of the (minor, but still there) reasons I haven’t moved is because my vote actually matters here. If I moved to a solidly blue state, I would be removing a blue vote and making my current state more red.

    One of my largest fears is that we continue sorting all the democratic voters into a small handful of blue states and lock in a permanent minority in government due to how we allocate EC votes and allot power in the Senate.

    If anything, we need the people in deeply blue states to migrate out into other places and help push our country towards actual balance. If we took 2% of the 2024 democratic Californians (9m Kamala votes vs 6m Trump, 2% of the 9m is 180k, and we could easily do this several more times) and they moved to a low-population red state like Wyoming, Montana or North Dakota (spot checking 2024 vote counts), they would have no EC impact in California, but would have guaranteed Senate seats and EC votes. They would also have huge power in their new local and state government, since the total republican vote count majority was less than that tiny portion of California.

    I know this is a simplistic way of looking at the numbers and not the humans, but blaming someone in a red/purple state for staying there is just not helping.


  • We can celebrate the ideal of a person willing to fight back while still defending the actual person who may or may not have been the person who did it.

    “Luigi” is gestalt:

    1. An ideal of a person willing to fight for all of us against an oppressive system
    2. A Human who is charged and not yet legally proven guilty of a crime; who may or may not be a scapegoat

    We hail as heroes those who fight against oppression even when, and often because, their fighting breaks ‘the rules.’

    If Luigi shot this CEO, then he deserves our respect as a hero: A person who has sacrificed to remove a serial killer who was above the law. If Luigi did not shoot this CEO, then he deserves our support as a victim of the above system.

    Sharing memes and keeping him in the public zeitgeist supports both.


  • I’m SO mad at this story. There is no reason to charge the parents. As others have stated, helicoptering kiddos is detrimental, and they need to be allowed to roam their environment – That can come at the cost of danger, but we cannot be expected to grow with 0 risk.

    Sure, as a parent, you can state: ‘don’t go there’, and ‘always look both ways’, but kids are kids and there’s only so much you can enforce without being overbearing. In this scenario, without video evidence, there’s no clear conclusion about fault for either the driver or the child.

    I’m okay with letting the driver off (criminally, let insurance pay the family but don’t put the driver in jail) and acknowledging this as an accidental death, especially since he stuck around and is complying. Charging the parents for negligence, though, is just fucking brutal when they are suffering the loss of a child, not to mention the impact on the older son, who probably is feeling an unreasonable amount unreasonable of guilt: “I could have held his hand; I could have reminded him of the road…” (not his quotes, my presumed internal dialog). Again, as others have stated, this is a city planning problem, not a parental one: If there was a way to walk to a grocery store that didn’t cross a 4-lane road, that’d be a better option, but there are plenty of places where that is not possible.

    These parents do NOT need the extra burden of being held legally liable for an accident and anyone blaming them for this without knowing them personally and being able to describe other aspects of their parent as negligent is just an asshole.


  • Exactly.

    I want the person down the street, who is barely able to pay rent and afford groceries on their min-wage job to instead be able to be secure. I want them to have housing, clothing and nutrition. Free stuff for others, not for me.

    I’m quite happy to pay for that ‘free’ stuff in the form of taxes, as long as my tax dollars actually go to it instead of a billionaire’s scorecard.




  • korazail@lemmy.myserv.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHave some civility.
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    1 month ago

    I’m now mobile, so my formatting will suffer.

    Capitalism = bad. I’m fully behind that, and see it as the root of the problem. What I don’t see is a path forward that doesn’t involve incremental progress, even if not all demographics are served. At least not without violence that will be disrupt even more.

    I think this is where we disagree, but I might still be missing something.

    You (assorted folks responding to me) want an epoch change where we rise up and take back the power we have. We have it right now, but the price to pay to enforce that is too high for me.

    I want a progression where we work towards owning that power. We had it partially when unions were still strong, but it was undermined. In my mind, the solution is education, but I have no power to enact that directly. My ability to influence is limited to my local org and voting.

    A green party, socialist party, etc, will never win an election in our current environment. Votes there are literally useless, if not spoiling a candidate that has at least some if your views. The system is rigged, sure, but you can’t flip this table and walk away.

    Can we separate this discussion into talking about politics and elections and eliminate Israel/Palestine? I’m a-religious, pro Palestine, pro humanitarian, but having that angle seems to quickly degenerate every conversation into ‘both sides are genocide’ and avoid the’how do we move forward’ question. I think these can be separated, but maybe that is also a place we disagree.


  • korazail@lemmy.myserv.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHave some civility.
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    1 month ago

    I feel we’re playing different games, or using different terms.

    Help me understand.

    Firstly. Let’s define words: I’m assuming/using my view of a US-centric Liberal vs Conservative.

    Liberal: Democratic party, wants to make life better for the larger segment of the population.

    Conservative: Republican party, wants to consolidate power and wealth in the hands of a few.

    That’s my personal and biased broad-strokes view of the political landscape.

    Conservatives have managed to gather enough popular support that people will vote against their best interest for either perceived economic gain or for ‘hurt the other people more.’

    Stepping back even further, what is your end-goal? How do you respect the desires of millions of people without some sort of representation, and if you have such, how do you ensure that the representative aligns with the goals of their constituents?

    Sadly, I’m offline for the day, but I’d be happy to continue this conversation.


  • korazail@lemmy.myserv.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHave some civility.
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    1 month ago

    In this post: not realizing that the ideal solution is not a single step away, but rather multiple steps – and they will not be simple to sell to a general populace.

    I’ll admit I’m not familiar with the term. ‘Electorialism’ seems to be, according to Wikipedia, a ‘half-way step’ between Authoritarianism and Democracy.

    As far as I know, we are still not quite in an Authoritarian state here in the US. We are more likely to be headed in the opposite way from Electorialism; where we are transitioning from what is a democratic process to one where oligarchs have consolidated enough power and influence that they can just say, ‘fuck it, we win.’ In that case, yes, I do want to make a case against Electorialism.

    In Electorialism, the dominant party, presumably the authoritarian one, conducts elections that allow their opponents a stage and promises to be free and fair while still controlling the levers of power. What we have seen in the last 8 years is a party, republicans, that are throwing every possible strategy at the wall in the effort to undermine and discredit elections with the end result that if they win, the election will be seen as fair and, if they lose, the election will be seen as unfair.

    All concepts of what are optimal democratic processes are going to be just that: concepts. We live in the real world. There are millions of people you have to convince to move to your desired method of representation. I think we agree on the end-goal, I just disagree on how to get there and think we can’t jump from a Trump presidency directly to a worker-owned utopia.

    Help me out. What’s our next step?

    Mine is to help elect people to local, state and federal offices that want to make life for everyone better.


  • korazail@lemmy.myserv.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHave some civility.
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    1 month ago

    My comment was removed by the mods… probably because I let my rage show. Though the mod log shows rule 2 instead of rule 1 :P

    Here’s a longer and nicer version:

    I’m a (US) liberal, and I don’t approve of any of the views described by kittenzrulz123. Lumping half the country into a single bucket is not going to give you a good overview of the myriad ideals we might have individually.

    You have a choice. You can look at the political landscape at the moment of the election and choose one of four options:

    1. vote for the guy who will absolutely fuck over everyone he can for his own profit. We knew what he was back in 2016 and he isn’t going to change.
    2. vote for the lady who has a chance to win, is probably still crappy for some demographics, but is miles better than #1 and not likely to declare war on a random country because she’s hungry.
    3. vote for someone who has a 0% chance of winning, effectively throwing the vote to the rest of the population.
    4. abstain, also throwing the vote to the rest of the population.

    At this time, our election system really only works for two parties. Any third-party vote is useless, if not counterproductive. If you can’t understand how that math works, let me know and I’ll break it down for you. I’d love to change that, but the process is by using our ability during primaries to put forward more liberal candidates that support election reforms, not by putting our heads in the sand and voting 3rd party hoping that we will make people notice… hint: they will not.

    If you don’t like your choices when you go to the voting booth in November, the solution is to get involved in late November and make things better next time. Join a local democratic organization and become part of the solution. Complaining online about how your choices suck is something we can fix if we all jump in. If you’re not doing that, then you are abdicating your responsibility and allowing others to make the choice of who represents us instead. If you choose not to be part of the selection process, the very least you can do is vote for the ‘lesser evil’ and not make things worse.

    Side note: the Primary election is the end of that selection process, not the start. Putting your values on the primary ballot is where you should spend your energy if you’re mad at the status quo.

    I will admit that I’m angry that we didn’t get a Democratic primary and that Harris was ordained as Biden’s successor without any popular input. The DNC is to blame for that fuck-up. It’s irrefutable, though, that Harris would have been better for Palestine, the US economy, US healthcare, foreign relations, and dozens of other topics than trump is.

    Would Claudia de la Cruz have been better? Sure. Her platform looks awesome. Did she have even a chance of winning? no.



  • I’ve not read the laws, nor am I a lawyer, but I suspect that the budget laws say something like “The [FBI] shall provide a budget by [date]”, but there is no following section attaching a penalty as there are in criminal laws, so there is likely no recourse.

    I imagine that this is the same as when you don’t have that report ready for the big meeting, or skipped out early before your end-of-shift duties were done: a reprimand from your boss and potentially getting fired… but his boss is, I think, Pam Bondi, the AG, in this case.

    Theoretically Kash could be impeached or censured, as could Pam if she doesn’t act. But we know how well that will go. Until then, his inaction is illegal, but unlike some of trumps actions, which can be stayed or reversed via court, I don’t think you can stay inaction.


  • That’s really the crux. There are two trump voters: There are 1) the easily swayed, misled, gullible, uninformed, and other adjectives that imply they are just not fully aware of what is going on; and then 2) the evil assholes who know fully that they are breaking things because they stand to profit from the breakage.

    Class 1 deserves our compassion, and should be helped to understand why their choices hurt themselves and society.

    Class 2 needs to be evicted from this reality.


  • While I am not defending Rodney, who is has not been found guilty of the charges, I cannot tell you what I would do if my child was taken from me.

    I have a spouse and multiple kids. I have parents who still live. I have siblings. Intellectually, I think I would not murder my child’s murderer and inflict extra harm on my family through my actions… but that situation hasn’t happened and I have no clue how I would actually react. Right now, my blood is boiling just contemplating it, though.

    If I were a single parent of one child, and that child was killed, then I would turn into fucking Liam Neeson without hesitation.

    edit: I finished reading the article after posting this. It’s not clear that the officer Rodney struck was the same officer who shot Rodney’s son, and seems to be unrelated from the wording. I feel for Deputy Henderson’s family, and hope he wasn’t an innocent who happened to be wearing the same uniform.

    Police in the US regularly choose to escalate, and our politicians choose to keep firearms available. All these deaths are on Congress.