• 9 Posts
  • 144 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: April 1st, 2022

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  • but nobody can win without being slick and two-faced

    And don’t forget ‘rich’, or more importantly, supported by the rich. A national-scale campaign requires resources that a typical organization can’t gather, and to win without such a campaign is miraculous in most systems.

    So, you’re assuming we’re all American here.

    Nah, like you said it applies to most democracies, even if America is an extreme example of these universal trends.


  • comfy@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mldeleted
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    21 hours ago

    I don’t know what the culture is where you are, but I don’t give people money for friendly gifts. If anything, that just implies our relationship is transactional and shallow, rather than a community who care about each other more than money.

    What I do is return the favor by giving them free things later, just like they did. Like buying them a drink at a pub.








  • but they never seem to consider that it’s them that keeps electing those people.

    How so?

    If one doesn’t vote, a slimy politician still gets elected.

    If one does vote, in most elections they can only choose from a small group of people who probably fail to represent them, and even if there is a reasonable option, they probably won’t win the vote anyway.

    The system is rigged, when it comes to voting there usually* isn’t a correct option. Our political voice must exist outside of elections.

    (I say usually, because a few elections are better than other, but generally speaking at a federal level, it’s slime no matter how you vote)






  • For what it’s worth: something I haven’t seen come up (so while this is a pragmatic perspective, don’t pretend I’m dismissing the importance of your relationship and your values! I’m only adding this for variety and discussion)

    People can change. Many won’t, but some do. [vid: former white supremacists describing their process of leaving] Whether you think your brother is willing or able to change is your call, and whether it’s worth the emotional and mental strain is your call. You aren’t obliged, but it’s worth considering.

    People who have left these ideologies, from what I’ve heard, often come back to two main points - they had someone in their life who cared about them, but was also unwilling to tolerate their bullshit, and they had to want to leave it by themselves. Honestly, I see parallels with people recovering from serious drug addictions and cults like QAnon.

    But, again, this isn’t easy and there’s no guarantee of them changing, so do not feel obliged to even try. Your health is more important, and there are plenty of other ways you can help change the world.



  • Some people who were in Special Ed report, like, major emotional trauma from it.

    Is that with people also in Brazil? Because your experience sounds very different from the cases I’ve heard in some other countries where Special Ed students are isolated rather than given extra classes at the end of the school day.


  • for a service/site/mom-and-pop shop to be sustainable without unending growth.

    I’ve been on somewhat niche sites which have lasted decades, with waves of people coming in whenever related sites screw up and trickles of people leaving when an alternative community becomes more popular. It’s a comfy, slow existence, which works for some communities, but not for ones like this which thrive on diversity and chattiness, rather than really well thought-out replies days apart from each other. On reddit-like sites, time penalizes how high a post goes (unlike a forum where years-long threads are very normal to see on a front page) so there is an inherent benefit in having consistent activity. That doesn’t imply boundless growth, but at least sustaining a decent level of activity. We’re not chasing ad revenue, growth for growth’s sake is not what we want or need.

    But with that said, a community with no new visitors can only lose them. That can be a slow process, but it’s inevitable. Been there, done that. Again, doesn’t imply that pointless growth is a good thing.




  • It is always morally acceptable?

    Morality is, literally, subjective. There is no universal answer to that question.

    I personally consider anything being sold by a distributor to be fair game, no questions asked. If I pay for mainstream music, films or games, most of the time, zero of that money goes to the workers who created those artworks. It just makes rich owners richer, because they legally own rights. I would go as far as to say it’s morally wrong to pay for those things, it’s not neutral, it’s supporting a cycle of abuse at your own expense. So that’s my perspective on your ‘giant corporations’ question.

    Digital copying isn’t stealing, unfortunately, because those giant companies deserve to have their hoard of capital expropriated.

    Two screenshots. The first is a headline: "The world's richest countries came up with just $22 million to fight the Amazon fires.", the second lists the budget for The Emoji Movie: $50 million.[src]