Is this an age thing? I’m about 40 and I never had instagram, barely used facebook, and didn’t use any others really. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem where someone backed out because I didn’t have instagram. But I also don’t have a big group of casual friends, and maybe that would be harder.

Discord sucks, but I’ve noticed a lot of social groups use it. A couple meetups I go to all use it for communication. Maybe that’s more bearable than instagram?

“Whoever told you that is your enemy”

I don’t accept the premise that working a job to make someone else rich is axiomatically good.

Many jobs make the world worse. I’d rather someone sit at home and play Tetris than build murder-drones, or work on some sort of AI powered stalking-ad company.

Many of the jobs are just bullshit. Another “AI” company? Another product manager with no real decision making power? A few billion dollars poured into “the metaverse”? Waste of time and resources.

That aside, most jobs make the owners rich while labor gets a few crumbs. You work all day making widgets. The boss pays you $10. They sell your widgets for $1000. That’s a bum deal. But there’s a thousand desperate people waiting to take your spot, plus union busters eager to betray labor and beat you up. Pay people the real value of their labor, and treat them with respect, and you’d likely get more people working.

Johnson is a heretical, hypocritical, piece of shit. No one should take him seriously. His church should – wait, he’s southern baptist? The “we’re going to split off because we want slavery” sect? Not surprising. Those assholes suck.

I get the vague impression that this is meant to subtly influence western society into believing that the masses aren’t truly people

Tinfoil hat theory would be that the evil leaders of real life (the ceos, the billionaires, etc) are planting the seeds so that if their plans fail and a revolution comes, they won’t be summarily executed

I read a book about startup stuff at the request of the CEO of my old company. Some of it was at least superficially interesting, but one part stood out as haunting. It casually mentioned how a “founder” at Zoom was trying to get money, and the investors thought it was a stupid idea. It was a “solved problem” that already had big players in the space. But they were personally friends with the guy, so they gave him a few hundred million dollars.

That’s not something to be proud of. Nepotism and bro-driven-investment isn’t the ideal.

But these rich assholes pretend they’re such visionaries. Gatekeepers of the future. Fuck them. Fuck them all. The climate is a disaster and they’re pouring billions into “Cats in the metaverse”? Crimes against humanity.

I feel like some of this is fundamentally wrong. Like it says such and such saves money, but cutting that program costs untold amounts as a consequence.

Like you can save money by not paying your phone bill, but then you don’t have a working phone.

So the nyt probably sucks by not making that clear to readers.

I really like Awakening but it’s hard to find players for it.

I had a group for about six months once, and it was pretty good. Except one player just never learned the rules, and refused to read clues. Like they found a clue on site that was like 10 sentences and she was like “I’m not reading all that”.

Who watches this slop? I just… why. There are so many good books, movies, tv shows, whatever. Stop watching slop.

Ok then no system works because any system can be sabotaged. Democracy can be subverted in various ways. Making a sandwich can be ruined by any number of methods. That’s not a useful way to look at the world.

This sounds like more of the “socialism never works [because conservatives/capitalists sabotage it]”

I think there’s some truth to this. Specifically, a lot of people are sort of reflexively conservative. That is, they don’t like change. If zohran gets free bus fare in, a lot of people who fight it now will fight to keep it.

I think some famous conservative said something once about how they can’t let social programs get in because people like them too much.

He could use some of that money for more immediate good. Start paying off people’s school debt. Build housing. Whatever.

the nation will see that democratic socialism will get them what they were promised.

What’s that old saying like “none are so blind as those who will not see”? I feel like people are so emotionally invested in “socialism bad, democrats bad” that it’s going to be hard for them to accept contradicting that.

Yeah I think that’s one of the things people that don’t always get.

Like you walk down the street and no one’s going to say hi to you, or engage with you much at all. People think that means we’re unfriendly. No, it’s more that we see ten thousand people every day and there’s no way to engage with all of them. Some of them don’t even have a shared language.

But if someone needs help? People step up. I saw a lady trip and fall down the stairs at the subway and a whole lot of people fake running over to make sure she was okay. Bike accident? Lots of people that had been in the background suddenly were helping.

People aren’t perfect. I saw a guy screaming at a woman he was with and no one stepped in, but I like to think there’s a line past which more people would intervene.

edit: fix autocomplete error

That feels on brand for conservatives

Someone else posted this, but I like the idea that Zohran’s response should be “No means no, Cuomo”

Ok, I understand what you meant better. Thanks for explaining further.

Ok, but that seems like a non sequitur. I don’t understand how your metaphor is supposed to help translate “[capitalism] beats communism any day of the week” into “communism isn’t automatically good because capitalism isn’t”. Those are two completely different statements.

I think it would help me if you connected the dots more when you write things.

My original point is: Communism isn’t automatically good just because capitalism isn’t.

I absolutely did not get that meaning from your comment at the top of this thread, which was:

No, but It beats communism any day of the week.

Plenty of stuff, turns out. But I’m sticking to my guns. I have a big backlog anyway.