por qué no los dos? Punch him in the mouth and do whatever you want.:-P
Or just stare deeply into his eyes until he blinks, then turn around and leave the room. You’re F-ing Neo, you don’t need to play these kids games - if there’s something you want, you just materialize it, easy.
Ofc… if this were a more irl scenario, I don’t think I’d be taking pills from some random dude offering me to either “get rich quick” or turn me into a 6-yr-old, pudding or no. Maybe this is how he gets rich, by selling my organs or some such.:-P
It feels like no matter where I turn some septuagenarian, or older, is making life miserable for myself and others. Usually these are older white Christian conservatives, obsessed with a delusional sense of reality that no longer has a basis in fact, or perhaps never did....
The above is what I probably should have said. Interestingly (to me at least:-D), historically “Millenial” used to refer to what is now called “Z”, it once having been the term used to describe the generation that came after “Y”, but has shifted all the way over to now having absorbed Y and then replacing it entirely.:-P But yes, in 2018 (according to Pew) that situation finished switching and the old Z is now the new Y - though if you google search these terms, most results are how to market to these groups, and that likely confuses things further.
What I mean is that imho it is best to take these terms extremely loosely - e.g. an elder Millenial may share more in common with a late-stage Gen-Xer (“righteous dude!”, e.g. having watched similar TV programs even if as re-runs) than with the later half of what is now called “Millenial”, and similarly late Millenials with earlier Gen-Zs (no cap no skibidi, def no Ohio), and so on.
Though whether someone has rich parents or not seems to override all other factors such as generation or responsibility to work hard and save money for the future, when talking about owning a home:-(.
The entire world is going through this right now. Many of us will never own a home - and no I don’t mean just Gen-Z and maybe Millenials, I mean people your age even. Fwiw, you/we still are doing better off than at least 95% of the world, but that is not to diminish the pain that we are losing hope b/c we are not doing as well as we thought we would. Find a way of coping that works for you - I am still searching for mine…:-( I just thought it might help to say that you are not alone:-).
Old people squeeze their eyes & ears shut so that they will neither see nor hear the cries of pain screams of agony as the world burns, and they say: “This is fine”.
Ngl, there is some merit to that - maybe that is how they survived as long as they have, as opposed to those that died young (selection bias). I too could become a zombie, numb to the world, and I would then exist even after it ceased to. But I choose to live - and that means to suffer, especially when my brethren and sistren all across the world suffer too.:-( It is not madness to feel pain when things are WRONG - I would argue that it is, in fact, sanity.
All that is the context for why I agree - we NEED to stay connected, but not 24/7; also it helps to balance doomscrolling with positive experiences: as described in what I thought was a super-excellent article on that subject.
It is not strange. They are greedy. Period. If ever someone is less greedy, then even if only after they die the corp becomes as greedy as possible, ASAP - e.g. Disney.
What’s weird is that we are also hard-wired to be generous, so piracy does weird things to our conscience. If that bothers you, my advice is to learn to tip well irl, and in CASH whenever possible - the WORKERS deserve your aid.
True, if you had researched the charity in advance and knew that, or at least trusted the intermediary who told you about it to have done that due diligence. I said “some” and I put the word charities in double quotes b/c not everything that passes itself off as a charity is worthwhile… though that ofc does not mean that the converse is true and that none of them are. I remember when a charity - I think it was the Salvation Army? - collected an enormous amount of funds for Puerto Rico after it was hit with an extremely bad storm, and it made a big fuss about all the houses it was going to build there, but even a year (or maybe it was multiple years?) later it had barely made any (something like 10 houses total, or some ridiculously low amount compared to what they had claimed they were going to do). There are so many stories like this. Another one I have previously donated to are CareNet pregnancy centers - they offer potential mothers neonatal health screenings and such, free of charge, plus diapers and what-not, sometimes even cribs when they have them… thereby being (I thought) authentically “Pro-Life” rather than merely “Anti-Abortion” by offering these people real options to work with, not just heaping heavy burdens on others without lifting a finger to help, b/c these people provide that finger, even if it is not a full-on hand up. Although more recently they have been caught lying to the mothers, telling them about horrific health consequences of having abortions that are simply not medically factual, thereby being more “Anti-Abortion” after all.
So, not all charities are honest. Many are outright scams. Some politicians even set them up as a way to attempt to avoid taxes, while giving themselves perks like Donald Trump used people’s donations to commission a painting made of himself, claiming that by doing so he was “supporting the arts”. Technically that was even true, as the funds did end up going to an artist. And yet supporting millionaires like Trump to have yet another portrait - of himself no less! - does not necessarily align with my own idea of what a “charity” is, or at least I mean one that I should send my own funds to. Though I have heard of fantastic ones that I would consider giving to even now. So I am not anti-charity, b/c some true charities I am for (and some I am not), I was just saying that sometimes it is so hard to distinguish fact from fiction.
And even if the charity itself is honest, often the people attempting to take from it are less so. So the efficacy of their own screening process comes into question too - yes a food bank can feed people, but how many of those were truly in need? Tbh, mostly I am setting that thought up as a caricature rather than realistic argument, as a bolster for my next point that does manage to stand all on its own, yet is strengthened by this thought experiment:-).
Workers at least you can see with your own two eyes that they are working, plus you consumed the food/drink product even if it was made out of sight in the kitchen. Oftentimes in the past, these are the people who are attempting to work their way through or up to college and may need the most help going through that process. In the last several years that might no longer be true, though it still leaves open the thought that these are the people who struggle the most, and could use a bit of “trickle down”. These aren’t people who have just given up and looking for others to take care of them, they will accept the wage they are given, but they HOPE for more? At the very least, I identify with that struggle. The owners may be a different matter entirely, but the workers… at the very least they are not evil corps like Disney.
But also, how is what you said any different? Aren’t charities doing the same thing for the needy as tipping does for workers? Governments do not take care of people, so giving to charities is like telling the government “Don’t worry about making sure that your citizens get paid a living wage. I got you fam.” Socialism has its downsides, but people don’t seem to realize that capitalism does too - i.e. the end stage of a purely capitalistic society is slavery for the masses along with a few at the top who own everything. The reason the USA did not devolve to that stage is b/c of HEAVY checks & balances in the system, e.g. detection & punishment of fraud & other similar events such as product safety - whereas in a purely capitalistic society, that is a “shared resource” hence disallowed, so every consumer would need to test every product by themselves?!? Police, firefighters, teachers, heck even roads are all “shared” hence socialism (government controls the means and production of e.g. roads), or at least capitalism & socialism existed side-by-side (e.g. both socialistic shared resources alongside capitalistic private ones - police/bodyguards, schools, roads, and so much more), but we were more socialist in the past whereas today the spectrum has shifted more towards the capitalist end of the continuum. Hence fewer protections in place - e.g. there is still a minimum wage, but that wage has not been kept updated to what is livable for decades now. So the whole idea of charity then is to circumvent the need for socialism to exist in the USA in order to balance things out, and instead to use the capitalist approach by allowing your money to become your speech and say “I want these people to be helped in this manner”. Exactly like tipping?
There is so much more to add but no time or space. One thing I’ll say briefly is that enlightened self-interest also seems like it falls on the side of tipping? People when they do not get enough may steal, so offering them a way to earn enough helps prevent that - or if not fully “earn” (like $3 tip on a <$5 meal) then at least you would incentivize good behavior? As opposed to a safety net that helps people regardless of how they act, which I am not saying that is you but some people feel that that is improper, hence the reasoning behind some of my phrasing - e.g. “there at least you can be 100% certain that they work”.
Perhaps you knew all this already and it is only I just catching up. In any case this discussion is fun:-).
The ethics are complex for sure… a bit like sailing the high seas:-). I have no right to tell you or anyone else what to do, I just shared my own thought. Fuck the SOBs that started this for sure…but the WORKERS are the ones getting pinched in the middle of that clash of wills:-(.
Also I know of no better way to be generous to my fellow human - unlike some “charities”, this is no hand-out b/c there at least you can be 100% certain that they work. Also, a LOT of people do not tip (or if they do, then not much), thus necessitating a more extreme tipping from those that do if the scales were to ever to be balanced (which they ultimately never will, but still a little bit can help).
This is really a trolly problem through and through: someone puts a human on the tracks (lets say mostly innocent - possibly they were goaded rather than forced into being there but for the sake of argument let us presume they have no malice or any ill intent whatsoever, like this is no scam that they are “in” on, again just for the sake of argument), and a tiny but noticeable pile of your cash on the other, then offers to allow you to pull the lever to switch the track. Fuck the evil POS who would do that for their own amusement ofc but… given that it happened, do you play along and sacrifice your cash to help the human, or allow them to get hit? Let us also presume that you have the “right” to your cash, i.e. you would get it back rather than it being impounded for evidence or whatever.
I choose to play along, knowing full well that the system is unjust. Maybe I am contributing to the problem, but I do not know what else to do that could help in even the tiniest manner. Passing laws to enforce payment of a minimum wage that is actually a livable one seems like an entirely separate matter to me btw - b/c whether you tip or not, or whether you want to tip or not (I saw that you do the former but neither of us really do the latter, though I come closer to that in one manner of speaking), without being forced to, greedy-AF people will never (it seems) voluntarily pay the workers more on their own initiative, so simply “not tipping” in protest seems to me to be an approach doomed to failure. I do not deny that you are correct though - they will certainly take my doing so as their cue that they can continue, not that it would matter if laws were passed to literally prevent that happening - it is just that I cannot control them, I can only control me.
Thank you for this respectful conversation btw:-).
There is nothing new under the sun - technology may be creating new avenues for people to rise up through, but the reasons for their actions remain the same. In Germany, it was the rise of radio that allowed Hitler to, for the first time in human history, bypass the established rule of that nation and talk directly to the populace, which he leveraged to become the ruling authority. At some point he was even banished, but managed to return. The similarities b/t him and DT are eerily similar, and yet those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.
But as for our economy, on that note I think we are following more along the lines of old Rome. Surely that worked well for them, with zero problems, and therefore we will be safe from any harm, forever… right? R-r-right!? :-P
What’s odd about it is that the founding fathers directly warned us that this would happen. We simply did not care. Specifically, they warned about opening up voting to the “uneducated masses”, rather than the intelligentsia who had sufficient leisure time to think through the issues as they voted, not needing to toil in a field for long hours in the hot sun every single day. Do we have the means to now convert EVERYONE into the intelligentsia, with mechanization e.g. robots can do the vast majority of effort to farm our crops, and tools like the internet that puts information at our fingertips without even having to so much as turn the page of a physical book? In any case, there are those who do not WANT knowledge, and yet still want the privilege of being leaders nonetheless - e.g. those who showed up on January 6 to “defend the Constitution”, while at the same time admitting that they had never in fact read it, not even so much as once.:-(
I get it. I have the same exact drives inside of me, as do you, as do we all. The difference is that some of us are aware, care about that, and even attempt to fight those dark impulses - to be lazy, greedy, and the like. Sometimes anyway:-). Whereas those behind the scenes seem hardened in their resolve, to intentionally go in the opposite direction… and since most of the people seem to either want to join them or at least not oppose them, they are winning. i.e. Elon Musk and Steve Huffman both.
And as a former mod, you KNOW - it takes ENORMOUS amounts of effort to fight against that. It is SO MUCH easier to destroy than it is to create, or even to maintain.:-(
I don’t think it’s about stupidity per se - and I am a working-class person myself, thus have to spend many hours of every day doing my work activities, with less time leftover to devote to such things, so possibly I might be recusing myself even from this? - and rather I think it is about people who are educated vs. not. e.g. those who can spot logical fallacies vs. not, and if some subject is about to be voted on, someone who can understand at least the bare minimum of what is being talked about (is trickle down good? bad? neutral?). Anyway, that ship has sailed… I was just saying that the founders DID warn us, and we DID ignore them, and there ARE alternatives other than restricting voting, i.e. making a liberal arts style of education free for anyone who wants it.
About hospitalizing people without a moral compass, I have a better idea: why don’t we put them in charge of literally everything, everywhere? :-P Unfortunately this is no joke, b/c that seems to be what tends to happen.:-( Shareholders vote with their dollars, and more often than not they seem to choose to invest into people who rise up and do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make profits.
“Stupid”, “immoral”, “evil”, these are not just words, but in another sense they are, b/c what matters is how the world truly works - one principle of that being survival of the fittest. If we killed off the top half of all people in the world after sorting them by IQ, the remaining people might be more “stupid”, but they would be alive, in comparison to the alternative. Conversely, people such as Robert Iger the current CEO of Disney who has run the company for almost two decades, tend to remain in power at the behest of the shareholders, who could vote to expunge him at any time if they wanted. You might say “evil” or “greedy”, but they say “me likey, and want to keep”.
What you are missing though it that it is not just those INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE who are “greedy” or “evil” or whatever, it is the entire SYSTEM - e.g. if Robert Iger ever were to die (he is getting older now…), he would be immediately replaced, by someone who similarly meets the expectations, nay the DEMANDS, of the stockholders. So no, I don’t think it is anywhere remotely close to as easy as you describe. The people who own stock in that company may not be okay with owning a slave personally, but they are quite happy to benefit/profit from the misery of the workers who are forced to churn out that assembly-line whimsey, under what you and I might call “evil” working conditions, but which they call “cost-effective”.
So be careful with what you wish for. You might want those people prevented from taking office, but in turn it is THEY who are likely to abuse their power in order to prevent US from holding office. Might makes right. I mean… it ABSOLUTELY does NOT, and yet if you are not willing to fight for what you believe, those who are willing to take action will win the day. In one sense “they” even have a semi-admirable trait then that you and I lack: humility, to bow before the rules of the universe and work according to its precepts, rather than attempting to impose their own particular brand of morality onto it.
The kind of person that would step up and mod your subs after first the protests and then you being booted… let’s just say that they would not be “random”. All across Reddit those people that mods were forced to ban for harassment of others, who REFUSED to follow the rules, are now sitting on top of the thrones - but not to serve the community, and rather to see how they can get it to serve them, just exactly in line with Huffman’s vision:-(.
Don’t worry about your subs though - those who decided to remain were warned, so it is on their own heads. Your subs essentially died, and what remains are their animated corpses:-(. At which point no wonder they seem a little “different” now!:-P - a little less usable, less friendly, less relevant.
Meanwhile, we seem to be doing JUST FINE over here on the Fediverse:-). I’m far happier with this than I ever was with Reddit (which I joined quite late, 4 years ago). Most niche topics are basically gone over here, but discussing general topics is actually possible now whereas with Reddit it was not (at least, not without a LARGE possibility of being hit with a veritable army of hostile commenters, almost regardless of what was said or where it was delivered).
Edit: this is not relevant in any way shape or form but… I wanted to add it anyway, enjoy:-). JO
Especially given the scabs mods (no, actually scabs was right the first time:-) that they brought in. Shudder - it’s foxes running the henhouse now, there will be blood.
Yeah but you are not the average customer. It is the same logic for spam (& chain) emails: so long as it works on a sufficient (even if small) number of people, it makes it worth their while. And then like every conflict situation ever, most people just put up with it and remain neutral. Hence, they continue to do it - b/c they can (get away with it).
Which pill do you choose? (i.imgur.com)
fr fr ong (startrek.website)
How to cope with existing right now?
It feels like no matter where I turn some septuagenarian, or older, is making life miserable for myself and others. Usually these are older white Christian conservatives, obsessed with a delusional sense of reality that no longer has a basis in fact, or perhaps never did....
It seems so strange to me that we are locked in battle with providers mining our lives for whatever, and we have to work our asses off trying to stay anonymous, to the point of being denied service
or even pseudo-incriminated for attempting to maintain our own life....
Remember when everything was so blocky? (startrek.website)
I went back in a moment of weakness and was punished for my transgression (lemmy.ml)
Face the consequences - Work Chronicles (workchronicles.com)
Original: workchronicles.com/face-the-consequences/
Cavity search (sh.itjust.works)
Transcription (of iMessage exchange): “Hi, is this Paul?...
Compy... Burninate that entire personal log. (startrek.website)
Public domain and self-sealing (startrek.website)
(not mine)
Here's to next year (lemmyf.uk)
Dark Patterns (neal.fun)
Curious website that explains how pages want to deceive you with examples (save to use and not taken very seriously)
"Legacy" by War and Peas (lemmy.world)
Ah roommie. Born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad. (lemmy.world)
Barbie in the original Klingon (lemmy.world)
Today is a good day for pumpkin spice latte (lemmy.blahaj.zone)