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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • If this is a transition from how I live now to never needing to work again, I’m guessing the first 6 months to a year would just be disbelief and slacking. Video games, TV/YouTube, etc.

    I’d probably do more of the things I do with my limited off time: gardening, taking care of family & pets, taekwondo.

    Honestly have no idea what I’d do once I became accustomed to it. Maybe travel? Participate in local politics more? Volunteer? I would definitely have a sense that I needed to do something to make my life “worth it” that I currently get from working to provide for my family.

    It’s definitely a result of conditioning, not some fundamental truth of the universe. But nearly 50 years of that conditioning is hard to break overnight.




  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.ziptopolitics @lemmy.worldWhy I’m Voting for the Enemy
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    4 months ago

    I was with this article until the accusation that the Biden admin “stoked tensions” between Russia and Ukraine. It was Putin who invaded Crimea in 2014 and Putin who started backing and staffing separatists in Eastern Ukraine in 2018 and Putin who was talking about getting the USSR back together in 2020 and Putin who massed troops on the Ukrainian border in mid to late 2021, not even a year into the Biden administration.

    It’s absolute bullshit to blame those tensions on Biden. Complete brain dead, clownish buffoonery.


  • I dunno it seems like there’s a pretty solid “type” for mass shooters - young, white, male - that means something is left out of your evaluation. Economic oppression (by the owner class) and easy access to guns (enabled by the owner class!) makes it easy for these disaffected people to commit mass violence on the rest of us.

    I’m sure if people had more economic security there would be fewer shootings but I don’t expect they’d go away. But a lot of these shooters talk about feeling alienated or disrespected. In my estimation that comes from expectations not being met. Probably unrealistic expectations.

    (Yes I know “not every shooter is a young white male”)




  • Our TV has a YT app on it and I never sign in. I have way better experience with it because it randomly suggests stuff that the algorithm would probably think isn’t something I like and yet it TOTALLY is something I like.

    This is the problem with all these attempts at AI. They don’t have the capacity to be actually random when they’re using large databases of accumulated input from us.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the non logged in version I’m experiencing is also constrained by my prior choices, but it seems like the data they’re holding is much smaller which allows for better chances at a random find.

    Plus my kids get on there and search for their weird gamer streamer blah blah BS too which I’m sure really throws a curve ball.


  • First: a company should pay at a minimum a wage that can afford housing nearby (probably within 15 minutes’ drive). The company should pay everyone for work hours + that round trip nearby commute time

    If the company is paying that wage, then employees who live farther away are making a free choice to do so. They still get that round trip nearby commute time paid, but time beyond that is not paid. Or paid at some diminishing rate.

    Companies should recognize a worker’s time list for the company’s benefit. But there has to be a balance because of the temptation to game the system.



  • You’re kind of arguing against the foundation of human society. If we’re all required to “do our own research” about things, where does that requirement end? How can I buy food if I have to do my own research on what’s healthy or what’s dangerous? What about my tap water? How can I put gas in my car? Use electricity? A computer? A phone?

    Somewhere along the way you have to trust the systems that have been built by the people before us to function, and for people who work in those fields who are experts to use their expertise.

    Obviously oversight & verification is also important. It’s important that people earn trust and work to maintain that trust and get booted if they violate that trust.

    But it’s foolish to just stop trusting experts out of nowhere. It’s extra foolish to stop trusting experts specifically because they say things you don’t like to hear. As far as I can tell, that’s been the accelerating project of the Republican Party since at least the talk radio explosion following the demise of the Fairness Doctrine. Maybe longer if you go back to Moon landing deniers and their ilk.


  • It might be a big tripping hazard to go full “free trade agreement” just to get a carbon tax. The better approach is probably going to be some sort of mutual taxation/tariff/duty pledge. Something where all the countries that opt in would levy a duty of some sort on all goods that involve carbon emissions in their lifecycle outside the transportation of said goods (this is a trade agreement after all), and waive that duty on all member nations’ exports.

    When people hear “free trade” they think of a system that waives all import duties, which may or may not be what is desired here. I can think of some bad actors passing a “carbon tax” just to get all the other duties on their goods dropped.

    The alternative of course would be an actual free trade agreement but with a lot more qualifications than just “carbon tax.” Like union support, a living minimum wage, free education through age 18 (for example), environmental protections, reasonable intellectual property protections, no wars of aggression, etc etc., PLUS a carbon tax.