I’m going to hold off on buying pork from Tyson this month, just to be on the safe side.

You wouldn’t need protectionism to do any of that.

It’s more that American cars are that bad, or at least that they’re that expensive. New cars keep getting more expensive as the oligarchy realizes that they can soak people on financing.

They are also getting more expensive to repair and mechanics are quitting dealerships in droves because they don’t want to a) buy specialty tools to do b) repairs that are needlessly time consuming and c) happen way too frequently to e) be paid a fraction of the repair time.

So, yeah, if someone was selling cars as good as a 2000-era Honda at a 2000-era price, they’d destroy the American market.

Hm. Now I’m torn between my hatred for LLMs, billionaires, and Shrek’s limits on body positivity.

Honestly, maybe it’s time to go back to the days of submitting your application in person.

I think that’s better for everyone at least for local jobs, anyway.

French-language protections in Quebec have emerged as an unlikely source of friction between Canada and the United States,

The President of the United States is an open racist who pushes English-only. Of course he’s not going to want to accommodate French.

The law has suspiciously little to say about wealth concentration. Hm.

You can’t trust politicians because they say they are “against” data centers. Desantis, for instance, a huge cheerleader for data centers, sees which way the wind is blowing and is proposing data centers now have to apply and data centers will be decided on a case-by-case basis. You’d be a fool to think it’s anything but a hoop made of fig leaves for companies to jump through so DeSantis can position himself for the moment.

Edit: Oh Jesus, fucking everything must always be a commentary on the post. You can trust Bernie on data centers.

I’m speaking theoretically about the software cycle. At some point, the product does what it’s supposed to do as best as it can. Then what happens? People in charge feel they need to make their mark, so things just kind of drift around for no solid design reason worth customers getting used to.

Thanks for explaining the downvotes, though.

Honest question: how can you make your mark on a product that is already perfect? At some point, software goes from meeting the needs of its customers to meeting the needs of the egos in charge.

Almost a whole day and still not hacked. Hm.

Too soon.

I miss the old internet because it was a time you could meet up with old friends and connect and stay in touch with each other.

A few things changed, though. First, enshittification of services. You used to go on Facebook and just SWIM in the lives of other people. Now it’s just promoted content. Second–related to the post–is rage was recruited to encourage engagement. Third, people’s behavior online shifted towards tribal identification, towards rage baiting the other side, towards performativity; and I honestly don’t know how much of that I can lay at the feet of Mark Zuckerberg.

I also miss the old internet because truly random things had a chance to make the rounds. Cracked.com had some of the finest writing I’ve ever read. Nowadays with SEO and official tie-ins (Forbes.com has a deal with Google), the only way to be seen is to spend money, and the only reason to spend money is to make money, so most everything online is now directly or indirectly an advertisement. AI only accelerated this process.

I think this is why Reddit became as huge as it did, because the weirdness still had a chance, and because people want to talk to each other. And now we have Lemmy.

We keep making and finding new islands as the waters continue to rise, but we used to roam the plains.

A few things I think about are:

a) what are the economic conditions which allowed for the liberation of women from child rearing and (to a lesser extent) domestic duties? what happens if those conditions are reversed? and is that what is currently driving the regression of rights?

and

Fatima Goss Graves, CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said progressive proposals — such as expanded and longer paid family leave and better access to affordable child care — are in fact about championing families and making childrearing easier without pushing women to abandon careers and financial independence.

b) would enough women, raised to see motherhood as one of many options, choose to have children at replacement rates? Because the stats are looking like there is no amount of government support that makes enough women willing to put with with the demands of child birth and child rearing to sustain populations. We should absolutely provide those supports, but there’s an idea that with enough support, we can have sustainable birth rates, and I don’t think that is correct. So maybe the policy discussion should switch to how do deal with a declining population instead of trying to dragoon women into breeding.

I think the whole concept has been completely warped from what Jesus actually said

Jesus made it sound like a pleasant vacation, a banquet, a feast.

The problem is that heaven collapses under the weight of eternity if you think about it (as you are doing). I don’t think it’s some kind of corruption or “going to a weird place” to reconcile the idea of an placid idyll with eternity; it’s just a place things naturally go when you consider the implications.

Yup. So you think God and Heaven are naturally quite important so you go to school to specialize in Bible study, and there you learn the Bible is crazy contradictory patchwork written by men serving the needs of their society at the time and that’s all religion ever is, so then you start thinking about how you’re going to make a living and you might decide to leave the church, or you may decide you like the cushy life and don´t mind lying to people every Sunday who are asking you to lie to them, who are paying you to lie to them.

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these stupid assholes actually think they are smarter than the population…

Ah, yes, the vaunted intelligence of the American public who elected GW Bush and Trump twice each.

Musicians use drugs? First I am hearing about this.

Let’s say that most of it does not stray far from the foundational rhythm.