jarfil

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Yearly inflation for December 2023 has been 160% (stuff that used to cost 100, now costs 260)

A 50% devaluation, is the same as a 100% inflation: stuff that used to cost 100, now costs 200.

Milei has promised a reduction in inflation for the next year, from the 160% to just 60% (stuff that used to cost 100, plus through the 50% devaluation now costs 200, will end up costing just another 60% more, or 320 “160”).

Meaning: instead of having to anounce a 220% inflation for 2024, he’s split it into “50% devaluation, plus 60% inflation”.

…see? He promised to reduce inflation, and he did! 🎉🤡 /s

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

You mean “TikTok inc”, with headquarters in Los Angeles, USA?

YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, also have plenty of stuff from Gaza, TikTok is just the more popular short video network of the moment.

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

TikTok’s algorithms […]

I’m afraid you have been heavily misled by TikTok, and/or are a new user.

I suggest you check either or both of these to better understand what’s going on:

• www.wired.com/…/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
• youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0

TikTok is a master example of enshittification, which consists in:

1. Offer users a good experience to hook them up
2. Introduce advertisements to hook up advertisers
3. Have hooked up advertisers bid against each other for a place in a users feed
4. Increase user engagement by showing them both what they like and the opposite
5. Tease users with a chance to earn money (taking just a 50% cut), so they get to compete against the advertisers, and each other, for a place in other users feeds

The discoverability on TikTok is abysmally bad, all you will ever find is either paid content, or content made by users trying to outdo each other in a race to attract/outrage (aka: increase your engagement).

Only thing you can easily discover on TikTok, is the most polarizing content possible, there is about exactly zero chance to get a realistic view into anything through TikTok; not even by averaging the extremes, which are custom tailored to your personal love/hate triggers.

jarfil, 8 months ago

You may not want to “check for weapons” a suicide bomber who’s just waiting for you to come close to turn you both into tiny chunks of meat.

What you want, is to threaten them with a weapon from a distance, have them take off any clothes that could contain explosives (that includes socks and briefs), and throw them far away from you. They could still hide some C4 up their ass, but that’s a risk you might have to take.

The correct thing would be to subsequently provide them with pre-checked clothes, like an orange jumpsuit… so if they didn’t, that’s where we may agree it starts being abusive (although unfortunately in line with what many countries routinely do to their prisoners).

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Where’s their line?

Based on WW2:

• Cruelty and atrocity: nice…
• Concentration camps: nothing to see here, everyone has them
• Systematic genocide: who hasn’t done some genociding at one point or another?
• Overt industrialized systematic genocide: …only if they attack you first.

Luckily we now have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… which everyone is ignoring. Oh well, we tried.

jarfil, 8 months ago

Western, Eastern, Hamas… a lot of speculative trading is done based on rumors, what better than rumors which actually come true.

jarfil, 8 months ago

tried just as hard as we did to move up the economic ladder

Topple the ladder.

The ladder is bad, no matter where you are on it, or how hard you try to move up.

jarfil, 8 months ago

Bringing up ways that white people may not be so privileged doesn’t actually address whiteness as privilege.

What about ways in which “being privileged”, turns out to actually be a hindrance?

I used to be a healthy, fit, educated, not poor, not homeless, white, tall, man, blonde, with blue eyes… oh, and high IQ.

Wait, did I just describe the Aryan ideal? Ultra-privileged, right?

What pisses me off, is that after being aware of those privileges from relatively early, and being really careful to never abuse any of them, when it turns out that I need help, instead I get my privileges thrown in my face.

It’s not a privilege to get mocked and laughed off by doctors, to get failed by teachers, to get your work destroyed, to not get believed about family problems, all because “you’re privileged”.

Heck, I once almost got run over by a car, because I nodded at a black girl to let her pass first, and she went off her way to hit me with the stroller with her baby inside, pushing me off the curb into traffic. Like, seriously?

So what, did I live my life wrong? Should have joined some neo-Nazi group? Should have used my privileges to abuse and scam everyone left and right? Should have kicked the baby…? The fuck.

jarfil, 8 months ago

That seems to say you should use all your privileges all you can, “but for the good”… while trying not to use them, striving for actual meritocracy, is the wrong way?

Yeah, in retrospect those might be wise words, in a “when among wolves, bite first then be good later” sense, but I find it kind of shitty as a goal for society. Oh well.

jarfil, 8 months ago

Not all the people, just the “wrong” people. And let’s not forget Palestinians have been trying to “produce” more people as quickly as possible, to the point they’re “about to win” the demographic competition, against even the orthodox jews who are at the same time trying to reach 25% of Israel’s population in order to become the “spiritual leaders” for others to fight their wars.

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

That scrap of land has not seen peace since the paleolithic, it’s through where most of the first Homo apes came from Africa and spread over the world, and everyone writing down their particular beliefs about whose land it is for future generations to read, has pretty much cemented it as a cursed land for as long as there are people left on the planet.

What “could” be done, would be to evacuate everyone, then nuke the whole area and make it unlivable for a while… maybe re-nuke it every 10 years for good measure, turn it into something like the Olympics, only for all countries in the world to show off their WMDs… but I still wouldn’t be surprised to see the same factions in hazmat suits getting back to killing each other in the interim.

PS: maybe call it “The Armageddon Games”, that could gain some support 😒

jarfil, 8 months ago

Updated title: “China and EU leaders agree on need of ‘balanced’ trade ties”

jarfil, 8 months ago

The dirty truth is, Hamas is made of civilians, just not the starving babies ones.

It’s made of guys like a father who one day got a phone call from the IDF telling him to surrender or get killed, so he decided to publish a video holding an AK, laughing and telling Israel to go and try. Next week he was dead, along with several members of his family.

When you hear news like “Israel bombed a building just as a bunch of refugees took shelter in it”… yes, those were civilians; there also likely were Hamas among them, and at this point it’s anyone’s guess whether it was 10% or 90% of them.

They’re civilians willing to risk their own families, and definitely everyone else’s families too.

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

IDF are the military. It’s more like “imagine the FSB calling you and telling you to turn yourself in, mocking them publicly, then getting surprised at finding Polonium in the soup”.

They’re not there to be the nice guys.

jarfil, 8 months ago

terrorists who target civilians with vague claims

That’s what I said; when they get hired by an internationally feared recognized country, you call it “the military”.

Otherwise, Israel has officially left Gaza in 2005, mostly use the IDF in non-settled areas of the West Bank, with the Israeli Police elsewhere… and no, doing like the US Police does, is not a good example of “policing”.

Don’t lower the bar. Police are the people in charge of solving neighborly disputes as peacefully as possible, anything else is a lie.

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Neither. This is one of the “global warming is messing up the Global Ocean Current Belt, which messes up heat transfer on a global scale, weakening and destabilizing the Polar Vortex, which starts failing to keep arctic air restricted to Canada and instead lets it do its thing down to Texas”.

Higher than normal variability of temperatures, is a side effect of global warming. It may look like “meh, it’s just +2C, who cares”, but when you switch from “-10C to +30C” to some “-18C to +42C”, in the form of heat waves followed by torrential rain followed by heat followed by frostbite, suddenly crops start dying.

Then you can extrapolate to “meh, it’s not likely to go past +5C”.

jarfil, 8 months ago

The population is not dumb, people are just trying to make the best out of the situation. Like when they had some reporters go to a village, where women were sewing some clothes:

• Reporter: "Do you like the life in the country?"
• Woman (in subtitles): "We do what we can"
• Guide-translator: “We do the best for our nation!”

If they could, they might revolt, but NK is really well structured to prevent that… and even if they run away to the South, they find themselves in a modern country with no hireable skills.

jarfil, 9 months ago

Why not a controlled tire fire:

youtu.be/XvkD4QgMtWg?si=2R0l3B6_xn7Oc_DD

jarfil, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

It says she previously worked at the Apple Daily… wasn’t that an “”“extremist”“” paper linked to the detention of that one lady for screaming at an apple in public?

theguardian.com/…/hong-kong-grandma-wong-arrested…

jarfil, 8 months ago

Wasn’t the plan to send all 2 million Gaza residents to refugee camps on the Sinai, where Israel would have to control and reeducate them for at least a generation?

Now, I’m no expert in genocides…

jarfil, 8 months ago

🤣… sorry, but since when have any companies paid fairly in any areas?

jarfil, 8 months ago

The CNN clip in that video, is even better: the reporter gives the guys a bar of chocolate, and they go all “ohh, it tastes so great!”. Then he asks them if they’ll give any to the children, to which the guy answer “they can have the wrappers”… at which point the reporter produces out a second bar saying “don’t worry, give them this”… still, I don’t recall the kids getting any.

jarfil, 9 months ago

Not really following what’s going on in Italy, what is the rate of males killed by their ex-girlfriends?

jarfil, 9 months ago

Female suicide, or the jealous ex killing a new partner, are not included either.

Domestic violence is a complex issue that “should” include, and address, a lot of cases that it currently doesn’t, but for some there is not even an idea on how to start addressing them… so I think it makes sense to tackle the obvious ones first: homicides.

Once we get that sorted out, with no more people thinking that “their” mate is “theirs” to do what they please with, like they do with “their” kids or “their” dogs, including putting them down whenever they wish… we might be able to get to the next issue.

jarfil, 9 months ago

According to some (right wing) outlets, Russia would be shoving immigrants into busses, shipping them towards the border, then giving them bicycles to go the rest of the way.

Apparently people consuming such sources, don’t realize that bus service is a normal thing in some countries, bicycles are more affordable than cars, many busses will carry them for you, and regular bus lines have more than enough capacity for over 200 people to travel every week.