Works on my machine. :P
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better than half our interns
My dad has been complaining about this kind of thing for baseball. The subscription to watch games online specifically blacks out home games because..l fuck you I guess? He’s paying for the service but he still needs to either use a VPN or pirate just to watch some of the games.
I posted a question about it a few days ago, but atm my tiny project is to get my town to plant more trees along the sidewalks so it isn’t so torturous to walk anywhere when it gets this hot. I tried emailing someone from a department I think handles this kind of thing, but not 100% sure and I haven’t heard back yet. I guess I’ll follow up soon if I don’t get a response.
I don't look at companies like people, because they're not. They're profit optimization machines. Thinking about it in terms of blame is like getting mad at a math equation. The truly depressing thing about all the evils of capitalism is that they're entirely rational and expected outcomes of the incentives and structures of the system. To a company, spending money to make a thing they can sell is functionally equivalent to spending money lobbying the government to get more favorable regulations. There is no moral calculation involved. Sure there are people who make those decisions within the companies, but over time the ones that make less financially lucrative decisions lose out to those who will do anything for a buck.
Recognizing this dynamic as our greatest barrier to progress is a necessary step to solving the problem. In order to be able to fight against such a powerful and organized enemy, we need to get as many people on our side and activate them enough to take coordinate collective action. To this end, we've seen how this individualized blame game has hurt our cause. (And the fossil fuel industry is at least partially responsible for pushing that narrative to the forefront.) People are naturally going to be hesitant to do things that diminish their quality of life and seeing people judge them for not doing so when they're already living with so little while the rich pollute to their hearts content can make people feel alienated from the struggle. It makes it seem like these activists and politicians don't understand or care about their circumstances. It makes it seem like we're being petty and disingenuous by going after relatively small things. Nobody likes to feel like the bad guy, so they may even overcorrect and be more receptive to climate denial. Even if they accept the premise and reduce their consumption, if they're convinced that this is sufficient and take no additional action, we're still screwed. It also doesn't help that the gov has been doing things to make even individual consumption changes even harder. China has made great strides in making cheap solar panels and electric vehicles, but we can't have that, think of the shareholders! Lets put trade barriers up on their import.
Don't get me wrong. I would never tell someone NOT to modify their behavior. If you are in a situation where you feel you can drive less, eat less meat, etc... go for it. My problem is using this framework as an overall marketing strategy for climate action. Look, climate change has just gotten worse over my lifetime. In fact, it's gotten worse at an accelerating rate. Whatever we've been doing... IT HASN'T BEEN WORKING! Whatever tiny gains have been made by changes in consumption have been totally eclipsed by the wastefulness of the elite. If something isn't working... you do something else.
USA #1!... at a bunch of things you don't want to be #1 at.
110%. Walkable cities and trains. Let's do it.
That is exactly what I’m trying to push back against. Guilting people over their tiny contribution to climate change is hurting the cause, not helping it. It’s a problem intrinsic to the consumption-oriented liberal approach to climate activism, but not exclusive to it.
Waaaaaaaay less than the people who have used their power to corrupt said system. Capitalists wouldn't have spent this much money on lobbying and propaganda if it wasn't needed. They try their best to keep some people from voting and the rest from having any viable choices that reflect what they want.
It's just counterproductive to conceptualize our current situation in terms of individualized guilt. It's not like going to privately check a box every few years is doing much more than choosing to consume a bit less. We need to be organized. Our enemies are and they're winning.
My point is, the important part isn't assigning blame, it's taking actions that actually have some path to success. You really can't ethically consume your way out of climate change. Identifying the corporations and governments most responsible for blocking progress isn't a mere moral victory, it's focusing our efforts.
What's properly amazing is taking a slightly less well-paying job because it's on a bus route,
Sure, but not everyone can do that. And I don't mean it's just difficult, but literally there are a finite number of jobs and housing options that will fit that criteria. As our societies are set up now, it is not physically possible for enough people to make a sacrifice like that for it to make a difference. That's why collective action is needed to make those big structural changes in the first place.
And if these big companies have the economic system so stitched up that individual choices barely matter, then what on earth makes you think they won't have the political system similarly stitched up so that individual activism doesn't make a difference either?
Oh 100%. I'm deeply concerned that there may be no peaceful, democratic way out of this. But that's step 2. Step 1, regardless of what our strategy ought to be, is organizing. Whether we need voters, protestors, boycotters, or an army, we need people who are able to coordinate with others. It's not individual activism, it's collective action.
To the people who are saying "Yeah but you're the one who buys the oil!!!!!" Please stop. Please think about any of the context surrounding those supposedly individualist decisions. Please think about what the most practical solutions are for fixing the problem. You can do that and be helpful or you can be smug and look down on others.
Sure, you buy and drive the car, but you didn't:
- Design towns and cities that can only be easily traversed by car.
- Decide where jobs and housing were located.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby against public transit.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby against regulations.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby against green energy investments.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby for imperialist wars to access oil.
- Spend millions of dollars to spread misinformation about climate change.
- Decide what cars were available to buy and at what price. (Demand driving supply only makes sense if consumers have a way to signal that they want something that isn't being offered. The main market way of doing that would be to not buy anything until the right good is offered... but as stated above, people can't just opt out of needing a car if the places where they can live and work are built around cars.)
- Decide to be too poor to buy luxury goods masquerading as green alternatives.
Framing the issue in terms of individual decisions lets the people who have most actively stood in the way of progress off the hook and ironically shirks any real responsibility to fix the issue. You think by saying that it's us doing it that you take responsibility for your actions and therefore because YOU got a hybrid car or some shit, you did your part and everyone else needs to do the same and it's not your responsibility anymore. Needing to put in the political struggle to take on the corporate interests destroying the planet takes effort that deviates from your normal life. You have to actually talk to people, work with them, and take part in collective action. And your responsibility isn't over until the problem is solved.
Also, sort of related: I always take issue with how dealing with issues like climate change is framed in terms of making sacrifices. Like sure, are we going to be able to do as much excessive consumption as we do now? No. But there are so many climate policies that would also just make life better for people in the short/medium term. We would be happier, healthier, and safer in a world where we got rid of our dependence on cars and replaced it with walkable cities and good mass transit. But instead of talking about how good it could be, instead the message ends up being "You're a bad person for diving a car. You need to give up using your car and go either walk to your job which is too far away and across a bunch of busy streets or cram yourself onto the underfunded public transportation that is crowded, slow, unreliable, and falling apart." No wonder people get so defensive. We don't want them to have to use the bad infrastructure. We want it to be so good that it's the best option by far. Pitch that future instead of lecturing people.
TL;DR: I WANT TRAINS! GIVE TRAINS!
This seems over engineered. I’m pretty sure a simple program that just replies “yeah sure” to anyone from the right department asking about something would outperform most CEOs.
We need to go back to cave paintings. It’s just hard to send a whole cave through the internet though.
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Execs Confused and Horrified by the Huge AI Bills After Thinking They Could Replace Workers for Free
Man, if all it takes to be a CEO is to make stupid decisions, they should just hire me. I’m the master at that.
What a loss that would be though.
They're streets ahead.
It doesn't. I just find stuff like this interesting. I don't really see a lot of the early memes get used anymore and I kind of wonder why? Do all of them have modern equivalents? Are some of them just no longer that useful for the jokes/ideas people want to express? Is this just an evolution of slang kind of thing where it just signifies if you are hip enough to know what's in and what's out of fashion?
Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world What do you think about using older memes?
Antisocial media.
My cat is kinda weird. No real proper meows, but a few sounds and mannerisms that tell me what he wants and one which I genuinely have no clue about.
- A kind of low volume, breathy, “heh”. He only really does this if we are already close to the food. If he’s anywhere else, he doesn’t say anything, he just behaves differently to how he acts when he wants attention. Way more mischievous and annoying.
- He wants attention frequently, but only in certain spots. For example, in my room he will only sit at the foot of my bed. He won’t sit on my desk or the chair next to me, nor will he move closer if I’m already in bed so I can pet him without moving. So what he will do if he comes in the room and I’m not in position, he goes to his spot, then just purrs or breathes really loudly. It’s super passive aggressive. He wants to let me know he is not pleased to be ignored, but not enough to move to me. Eventually he leaves if I don’t give him enough attention quickly enough. Idk why he can’t just sleep on my bed for a while if he’s just gonna go sleep somewhere else anyway.
- Sometimes he walks around the house carrying stuffed animals in his mouth and makes weird, pathetic sounding noises. Hard to describe. But it doesn’t SEEM like he wants our attention or anything. So, idk.
Asklemmy @lemmy.ml What are the current best ways to learn languages online?
Like others said, seems fake. However it did remind me of what I saw when I went to the town in Japan with all the deer. They just cross the road whenever the fuck they want and expect cars to stop for them, and they do. It’s the deer’s town, the humans are just living in it.