• 0 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle
  • Seems overly cautious, or lemmy.world is trying to find excuses to cut off content they don’t like. Legal trouble for allowing access to those communities, which aren’t even based on lemmy.world, would be so much of an overstep, they’d probably be able to get free legal counsel from the EFF or a similar organization.

    Anyways, this will be my last post on this server. Even though I don’t use any of those communities, I don’t want to have to constantly monitor what has been banned to see what I may miss out on.

    Apparently, lemmy.world also removed c/shrooms, which I didn’t even know about. And again, risk of legal trouble for that would be extremely low.






  • The Supreme Court is heavily in favor of “states rights” now, so state politicians know they can cater to special interest groups (for donations of course) with impunity. States are heavily gerrymandered, so they have little risk of losing their position. In some cases, such as book, education, voting, and immigration laws, the goal is to further ensure the states remain Republican in the future (prevent children from growing up “woke,” and prevent immigrants from living there, which tend to vote Dem). Democracy in the U.S. is pretty broken, and is slowly being dismantled further.




  • LOL. I watched that too yesterday. I don’t think the people he talked to were the most reliable narrators though. People have been claiming everyone else doesn’t want to work since the beginning of time :) Some of the people they were complaining about “collecting checks” sounded like they actually were disabled (seizures, anxiety, etc). Regardless, if you feel your choices in life are to work at a gas station for $7/hr and still need government assistance just to survive, or just collect a check, you’re going to choose the check. These people are broken by poverty, and believe they have no hope to lead successful, rewarding lives (which may or may not be true).

    I have family that lived in some of those exact same towns. Sadly, most died very young (in their 20s) ) due to poverty/drugs/shit-life-syndrome.



  • IDK your personal experience, but it’s almost always the pay. Possibly you’re just matching the pay other companies offer, and the industry doesn’t pay much in the U.S. comparable to trades that require equal training, so there aren’t many workers that go into that trade. Or, the labor market is extremely tight for that trade.

    I was in a similar circumstance, and was able to find quality candidates by raising what we were offering considerably (+30-50% above regional average, according to sites like glassdoor). We were able to attract very good employees away from their previous employers this way. But, these were more “professional” jobs, and sounds like you’re looking for “lower-skilled” technicians, which may have different subtleties. Another option is apprenticeship-like arrangements (on-the-job training + paying for technical school), depending on the industry/trade.

    If people don’t care to have work ethic, show up on time, etc, it’s usually because they feel like they’re being shafted, and have horrible, non-inspiring management, so they feel they owe the company nothing. If people feel like they’re working for a company, instead of with a company that’s helping them “self-actualize” or whatever, you get the “companies pay just enough so their workers don’t quit, employees work just hard enough to not get fired,” attitude.


  • Most leftists in the U.S. are democratic socialists, social democrats, are some flavor of anarchists; not authoritarian socialists… Most do not think violence is necessary, except for protection against the increasingly fascist right-wing. Many believe it’s possible to move closer to a socialist-like society by building mutual-aid networks and communities, and promoting candidates for government positions that align with their values; not through a violent revolution.

    And yes, I would prefer systems closer to Scandinavian countries, which the right-wing here calls socialism. Ideally, I would like to see some kind of real socialism where the workers own the means of production (factories, stores, farms, etc) and controls it through democratic processes, not the investor-shareholders or the government. I think the term is anarcho-syndicalism, but I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.


  • I cannot imagine a system that would lead to more freedom, better education or innovation.

    LOL.

    Even though I acknowledge that other systems have been tried in the past, I also believe that all of them, except capitalism with a few social tweaks, have failed.

    Capitalism fails every ~8 years requiring the use of vast amounts of public funds to keep afloat. I’d also say if fails daily if you look at all the needless suffering occuring in the world today, especially in the most “free market” countries and the countries these exploit. We have “socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else,” as Jon Stewart would say.


  • I’ve spent years working at a fossil-fuel-adjacent company, and I’ve noticed that even some intelligent people (consciously or unconsciously) avoid any information that that might make them think they may not being living a perfectly moral life, or information where the obvious solution goes against their “values” (pro-business, free market). They also grasp for any information that affirms their values and lifestyle, no matter how easily discredited the source.

    It’s kinda worrying that it always seems to result in Nazi-like conspiracy theories like “the Agenda,” “Elites,” “groomers,” “cultural marxism,” etc.



  • If I use a private window, and don’t log in I get a lot of right-wing stuff. I’ve noticed it probably depends on IP/location as well. If at work, youtube seems recommend me things other people at the office listen to.

    If I’m logged in, I only get occasional right-wing recommendations interspersed with the left-wing stuff I typically like. About 1/20 videos are right-wing.

    YouTube Shorts is different. It’s almost all thirst-traps and right-wing, hustle culture stuff for me.

    It could also be because a lot of the people who watch the same videos you do tend to also watch right-wing stuff.

    In general, the algorithm tries to boost the stuff that maximizes “engagement,” which is usually outrage-type stuff.



  • Corps frame it as an individualist problem because they don’t want regulation, which is really the only viable way to attack the problem (and regulations needs to be backed by treaties with teeth since it is a global problem).

    You can’t expect every consumer to research every product and service they buy to make sure these products were made with an acceptable footprint. And if low-footprint products/services are more expensive or somehow not quite as good, there will be a financial incentive to use higher footprint products (if individuals acted “rationally,” this is what they would do).


  • Twitch takes 50% revenue. Youtube takes 30%. Twitch has an overly strict TOS to stay relatively kid-friendly. Twitch recently tried to limit content creators from showcasing sponsors in their own videos, but I think they backed away from that plan. Basically, it’s at the fully enshittified stage at this point.

    Apparently, there’s a new twitch competitor, Kick, backed by an online gambling company, which I even worse. They have their content creators do gambling streams where the odds are modified to make it look like their games pay out more. And they explicitly promote bigots and fascists on their platform.