whofearsthenight

@whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
0 Post – 349 Comments
Joined 11 months ago

"I want you to know that I don't like nazis. But I am fine platforming them and profiting from them. Now here is some bullshit about silencing 'ideas.'"

I just want to take this time to say fuck Reagan.

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CEO yacht club fee - 5.99
CEO bonus fee - 10.98
CEO bottle service fee - 2.99

Idk doesn't seem that hard...

I have a feeling you "aged in to conservatism" because that's when you finally had money and humans are generally shit when it comes to "fuck you I got mine" but speaking as a millennial, that's just not happening. My generation's retirement plan is to die at our desks hopefully in a way that creates a lot of work for our bosses. Although on the less cynical side of things, I also tend to think that generally people are becoming more tolerant over time.

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This turning out to be true is unsurprising, but if it were, follow it to its logical conclusion and you would see large retailers lobbying the government to increase wages. Like, we live in a fucking police state, the problem is not that we're suddenly an outlaw country, the problem is that people don't make enough money or have enough safety nets to live. It's the same with all of the "Americans feel bad about the economy even though the dow is up, why?" Well, because we can't afford housing and groceries. Simple fucking problem.

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When I was a kid, I would go buy a CD basically every paycheck/allowance, for probably around $15-$20 of '03 money. 12ish tracks. I would add basically about 30 tracks to my collection per month for $30-$40. And even though I owned those (as long as my little brother didn't fuck up the disc), I could only access the handful that I could carry with me. If you told 15-17 year old me, that for $11 a month I could access basically any music I could think of instantly, anywhere, I would've been like "sure, and then we'll listen in our flying cars, right?"

There are lots of things that absolutely suck about modern life and the enshittification presented here, but music fans have it pretty good.

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This is the woke mob trying to repaint history. The settlers arrived and invited the native Americans to dinner and the native Americans taught the settlers about "maize" (which means corn) and then the settlers asked they would move to the very cool reservations where they could have the casinos and the native Americans were like "yeah bruh."

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What double sucks about this is that every time I've seen something like it, it's some middle manager who fights tooth and nail to try to get their team anything and is given a budget of $6.37 and whatever they can find in the break room for 100 people. I have unfortunately been that guy a few too many times and had to explain to absolutely clueless managers that doing nothing instead is preferable.

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So many things in your house that are probably pissing you off:

  • it's very easy to replace an outlet that doesn't hold a plug or is a little off for whatever reason.
  • ditto light switches
  • door handles and shit. We hated the jank handle on our patio door that barely worked and required specialized training to get to lock. $12 for a new one, that was much more aesthetically from this decade. (that said, some lock lube, which is a thing, goes a long way)
  • ditto for the various shitty faucets in this house (or any slightly older house.) You can get a ton of bathroom fixtures for under $30.
  • hinges. Unless you're trying to re-hang a safe door, you're going to be under $20.
  • faucet diffuser. They just screw on. Have you lived in your place for more than a few years and haven't replace them? Just do it, it's like $4 a faucet.
  • doorbell. Smart doorbells can easily be had for under $50. A little easier often than replacing the traditional bell because you usually have a plug in chime rather than something wired.
  • a can of sprayfoam. Seal that area that is letting in air. Trim it with a box knife, chances are you won't know the hack exists.
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Firestick's are just re-skinned android, which itself is a linux distro very basically. It's not extremely difficult to get a working terminal that can install languages and packages like a normal linux distro. I think they even have OOTB support for keyboards/mice. That said, it's a lot funnier to picture them sitting there with the remote like it's super smash.

Doesn't this just mean Newsom appoints a replacement to finish her term and then they can get back to confirmation process? I seem to recall that was the reason so many called for her to resign, she was holding things up because she was too ill to sit for the confirmation process.

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That's what I was thinking. Boy's got a brain as smooth as a river stone, and somehow that's lost its point?

I reject the entire premise. There are a ton ton ton of jobs that are way easier to deal with than working in fast food or retail. The "marketable skill" trope is just more classist bullshit so you can focus on the guy barely squeaking by instead of the record corporate profits and massive CEO compensation. I would be willing to bet actual dollars that anyone complaining about these folks making too much money wouldn't last a single shift.

Also, we're talking about fucking California. Even in the low-cost areas of CA, $20/hr still means roommates and ramen.

Basically, “it’s not good for your happiness nor your ability to be open to new ideas. It’s also bad for society, so maybe we need to rethink this”

Ah yes fresh ideas like "we should have a treasonous rapist for president" or "maybe the party that doesn't believe women are real people is for me" or "as a non-white cis male, maybe I have too many rights."

If it were 20 years ago, maybe this piece would make a little sense, but republicans are full mask off now. I don't know that I would call it bullying, but I would call a piece that unironically suggests women (or anyone) engage with these people incredibly naive at best, and in 2023, just downright stupid.

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lotta people are going to be real mad about their upvotes when op follows up with "...and that's why Lauren Boebert is great" or whatever.

AOC dancing in college, Vivek Ramaswamy rapping to Eminem like 2 weeks ago.

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Over/under before data breach and this all gets leaked?

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Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.

Well, at least he's right about the ego thing. He's going to get traded for a handful of batteries within the first week lol.

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... and even then, even if it's just about economics, woefully fucking wrong. You can look at just about every economic measure under Dems vs Repubs and the outcomes are starkly different. The way they spend money is also starkly different, though at least on this front I would grant that compared to many countries, we don't have a full-left party, but still wouldn't call them conservative by any stretch.

tbh equivocating the two parties in 2023 after watching from birtherism to a full fucking attempt at a coup by republicans is very iq-like-lukewarm-pea-soup take.

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I think this is the difference between private/public companies. They don't have to deal with the "growth at all costs" mindset that plague public companies.

Yes, however in this case, actual objective reality seems to support the idea that there is no evidence for a Biden impeachment instead of the made up alternate reality those conservatives were living in.

It is, and IIRC you don't even "own" a movie even if you physically have it. You own the physical disc, not the content on it. Granted, it's a lot harder for Sony or Discovery to come kick down your door and take your copy of Ice Road Truckers so you have to rebuy it...

I don't mind much paying for streaming (although that's increasingly more and more annoying and I still tend to just download whatever I actually care about) but until and unless I can pay to "own" a movie and they just provide me with a DRM free video file of some sort, I will never "purchase" digital content like this.

If you tried this kind of bullshit in just about any other context, even normal people would think you're crazy.

Normal Person: "hi there, one blender please. I'll take this one for $25."
Sales person: "Cool here's your receipt."
NP:: "It says here at the bottom of the receipt that you can just come in my house and take this blender back whenever you want or maybe never?"
SP: "yep."
NP:: "And you don't tell people that ahead of time?"
SP: "no when you buy it you agree to that by opening the box and it is on the receipt you get after you bought it."
NP: "you fuckin with me rn?"
SP: "afraid not, and would you look at that corp says I need that blender back, thanks."
SP: "oh, shoot. I see here you also bought a toaster from EvilCorp sold in one of our EvilMart locations a couple years ago, we've decided to license that brand instead to our new partners FukUMart, so we'll be taking that toaster but if you want you can head to your local FukUMart and buy that toaster again for more than you paid the first time."
NP: spontaneously combusts

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My latest ad-shock was over at a friend's house. I've not had cable since probably '03? They have cable because a parent lives with them and insists/pays. Just having the TV on playing random things felt weird. Weirder still is having the movie interrupted by ads every 5 seconds. And the ads are just gross. The only thing that was decent was using it as a discovery service. The movie, one of the X-Men that was not one of the good ones, was what we stumbled upon. We watched for a bit, then ended up switching to watching it elsewhere to dunk on it. In ad-free, interruption-free, 4k with surround. Paying for the cable experience (which is rapidly the streaming experience) seems entirely anachronistic.

So it's felt like this to me basically since I became an adult. For one, I work in an industry where the holidays mean nothing. And two, now I have adult shit to do, so there isn't a ton of time to just sit around baking and watching Christmas specials and what not. Also can't really stand the consumerist side of things and while I do like giving gifts as a thing, I don't like the idea of "just buy some shit" or "whoever gets the most presents wins."

Now all that said, when I think back to what used to make the holidays special for me, I realized that was adults deliberately making the holidays special. And the shitty thing about being an adult (unless your SO is like, from the Clause family) is that you kind of have to do that for yourself, and you're probably going to have to do boring adult shit to make that happen. Like, you might literally be putting something like "Bake cookies/Watch 'The Grinch'" into your calendar. There is a lot of little things you can do as well - play some music, get some scented candles, stick a bowl of decorative pinecones out, etc.

I think this also helps a lot with other people, or in my case, my kids. I don't have a ton of friends (I'm very much a person with a small circle, but all people i know I can call if i need help moving if that makes sense) but we do some small get togethers. With my kids, I try to do more of the things that make things feel special for them. Lights on the house I could take or leave (back to being lazy) but I do my best and I put them up, even though it was just a few days ago because that was the first day that wasn't pouring where I was at home when it was light out. I make it a point to watch some Christmas movies (and let the kids come to a consensus on which) and bake some cookies or whatever. We usually go every year to that neighborhood where every house has cool lights, even if that is an hour drive away. Lots of little things like that.

Anyway, I feel like the holidays are very much a "fake it til you make it" scenario. I tend to think about it like "what do I remember that I liked about holidays" when I was a kid, and then force myself to do those things. What I've generally found is that there are definitely times I've regretted not doing anything like that, but I never regret when I forced myself to do something like this, and I rarely remember the "forced" part.

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So Threads, which is has 140+ million users and has consistently grown since launch without federation is worried about "getting enough users" from the fediverse, which has less than 10 million?

Fedi users are also about a bajillion times less likely to migrate to a Meta product than the other way around. There was the opportunity to catch some people and help grow the fediverse, but between this and the mastodon HOA (pushes glasses umm excuse me you forgot to put a CW warning on your post about flowers a flower killed my dog when I was five and this is very problematic trauma you're causing and your alt-text should be at least 3 paragraphs and include a bibliography) it's likely the fediverse just did what it needed to ensure it stays a niche for like 3 audiences and that more people are stuck with the corpos if they want content that's not about being a communist or using linux.

Anyway, this is a step for Meta to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Everyone keeps saying how Meta is going to destroy the fedi (don't worry, we'll take care of it for them) but no one is saying how. For example, they cut us off? So what? We're cut off right now.

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I don't have a lot of specific love for any company, but Nintendo getting acquired by literally anyone would be a sad day.

I'll toss in that I'm fine with the luxurious versions of those things being for profit where it applies. But that's the rub, the ruling class is probably going to define anything past a cardboard box and gruel as "luxury."

Musk is a barely part time CEO of an automaker that had a 10 year head start and is about to get passed by just about every other major maker. He's producing cars rife with QA problems, and ships about equal parts vaporware to actual cars. There is also a ticking clock on a significant part of Tesla's business which is selling carbon offset credits (side note: what's the fucking point then?) and other subsidies that seem to have no plan to solve. He spends his actual time shitposting now with extra anti-semitism (and I guess we're glossing by the anti-LGBTQ shit he's posted several times.)

SpaceX is healthier, but also has massive weakness in that they largely that way because of massive subsidy and lack of regulation on shooting satellites into space.

Literally just about any other employee, not CEO would be fired 20 times over. That Elon remains the head of any company should send investors screaming for the hills because there is basically no clearer sign that the companies have no actual board and thus no actual oversight. Elon shouldn't be in charge of picking between McDonalds or Wendy's, much less an actual company.

The only way any of them still make any sense running is if they assume that Trump is going to be dead or in prison by next year.

This is going to be the subtitle for whoever writes the book about Trump in a few years.

a few random things:

  • $5.99 magnetic measuring spoons. They stick together and nest.
  • $18.99 MagSafe phone car mount. I use iPhone and my car supports Android Auto/Carplay, but there isn't really a good place to stick your phone. This thing is basically a big magnet, I plug my phone in, throw it on this thing, and we good. Worth noting, even if you have CarPlay (guessing Android Auto as well) even though you don't need to use your phone, some apps have some functions when you're using them in this manner. EG: maps displays the next few turn by turn directions on the phone screen, and the overview of the map on the carplay screen.
  • decent/good chef's knife. I think the one I'm using now is about $30, but you can get the ol' reliable Victorinox for around that price or a little cheaper.
  • cabinet lighting pucks. I think Walmart has them for like $12 for two, but they are basically stick somewhere, motion activated lights that are battery powered. Paired with rechargeable batteries, I can now see the food that we push to the back of the cabinet to die.
  • new streaming stick thingy. Though I greatly prefer Apple TV, it's hard to justify the price of those compared to Roku/Fire TV. That said, if you're hanging on to an older version of the Fire TV/Roku, upgrading helps the annoyance factor because it's just far less slow. We just added a $24.99 4k Fire TV stick, much nicer.
  • Wireless chargers for phones. You can get them for like under $10. Buy 5, put them where you generally set your phone down. Or more simply, right next to the bedside. I generally only charge at night, so much nicer to be able to just drop it on a pad/magnet, etc.
  • $9 dimmer switch. Our master bath is weird. The toilet/shower area has a door. The sink area connects directly to the bedroom with no door. The sink area has large mirrors and massive amounts of lighting. Fucking sucks if you're just getting up to pee and you now have the light of the sun on you and your partner at 3am.

more niche, bunch of smart home shit:

  • just think about how $10-$20 and a little bit of thought can improve your life. I have a switch connected to my espresso maker, now I can yell in the shower to turn it on to pre-heat. If I had a regular schedule, I could automate this further just on time. I have it set so that once I tell it to turn on, it turns off after 20 minutes.
  • motion sensor lights. though technically you don't need a smart home for this, there are some lights in my house that I only want to turn on when someone is there. I have a hallway, for example, that is more or less a cave tunnel. Any time I'm in that hallway (or anyone else) I want to have some light. So I have a motion sensor that turns the light on, and based on the status of the sun, it dims accordingly. When I walk into my garage, there are a few lights that turn on in sequence and it feels like you're walking into the bat cave.
  • buttons! You can buy many different remotes for < $20. Pretty much anything you automate via voice you also need a button for. Pro-tip, use in-wall switches where you can, but in my case I didn't have a neutral wire because it's an older house, and my options were pretty limited/expensive.
  • last example: my entryway lights. I have a door sensor ($10-15) so if I open it I can perform an action. My entry light has a smart bulb ($9.) I also have a floor standing lamp adjacent to this that has a smart bulb. What this allows me to do is check when I've recently arrived, and if it's after sunset and the bigger light isn't already on, turn on this entry light. If my TV is playing a movie, the light goes on in the dimmest setting so arriving people don't disturb.
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I think we can probably also toss in demand from the pandemic. Lots of people suddenly had need for a new computer and now with return to school/office lots of those machines are probably seeing a lot less use. A couple of years ago the articles were "record demand for MacBooks."

only purpose it currently serves is to create a situation where we’re under the tyranny of the minority.

Although optimistically a lot of the way the government was designed is to prevent exactly the type of person that Trump is becoming president, tyranny of the minority is part of the system. EC and the senate are definitely designed in a way to prevent the unwashed masses from gaining too much power, and keep in mind when the framers were designing this we're talking only about white land-owning men. Our government's design is progressive for its time compared to a literal monarchy, but it's still clearly designed with a caste system in mind.

Consensus from those with closer experience is that he's always been kind of an asshole, just not a crazy asshole. Also, the whole "Elon's a Tony Stark genius" was literally a marketing campaign and he used to have a really good PR person. He fired that person some years back (want to say around '17-'18?) got on twitter and let that fully rot his brain.

I think this is a fairly predictable outcome when you fire anyone who contradicts you and seem to spend your whole day hotboxing your own farts with a legion of minions in tow who will stop at nothing to tell you what a great experience that is.

"Parental rights" is just another dog whistle. It's up there with zoning laws concerning multi-family dwellings.

There was a tiny window of time back before like 2010 where Google was legitimately a good choice. At the time Chrome came out, Firefox was having some notorious performance/bloat issues, and conversely Chrome was light and fast. Lots of stuff that came out around 2000-2010 from Google was legit best in class, and they were still generally in their "don't be evil era." That's obviously gone way out the window and has for some time. I started switching away from Google stuff around the time they killed Reader, and I'm glad I did because they've only gotten increasingly awful.

The trend when doing web-development since at least 2014 or so is mobile-first responsive design, which is basically as you describe, and it is really not that hard.

You're right - the only reason that any regular website isn't performant is usually because it's chock full of bullshit. Most of the web is unfortunately riddled with a few problems:

  • library bloat. The vast majority of developers (even outside of just web) will include a giant library for 1-2 functions instead of just writing it themselves. I don't really blame them, most of the incentive for development these days has little to do with building things well, but instead focuses on building them quickly. With web dev in particular, it's extremely common to import a few thousand npm packages from dubious sources.
  • on the web especially, everything seems to be running 3-4 different tracker networks, ad tech bullshit, anti-adblock stuff, click/scroll/jackers, etc. I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of the regular web, the content is less than half of the actual function of the site.
  • It's also extremely common in web dev to use some cool kid toolset designed to recreate photoshop on the web to build a blog or whatever.

It's only the smaller ones that I really miss in the fedi. Like, my pipeline for memes is doing fine, I doubt i'm missing any cultural touchstone moments, but on the corpo-net if you needed info specific info about your window box AC unit, not only was there probably a sub, but there was a larger sub just for general AC that would probably ban your post and say something like "hey post this in windowAC."

Hmm, should i have the fascist, or fascist-lite? Tough call...

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