LesserAbe
@LesserAbe@lemmy.world
- Comment on Maybe Trump's Presidency Will Make Everything So Awful It Will Facilitate Actual Positive Change Nationwide 3 days ago:
I’ll quote my reply to the other person:
OP said “maybe something good will come out of this” and you said look at history, the best that will happen is some minor temporary improvement. I pointed out several significant long lasting advances. I don’t see where anything you said here disproves that.
As I said, yes, there are significant problems we need to address. But being negative to the point of denying reality isn’t some act of resistance, it’s capitulation. Telling people there’s no hope helps the enemy.
- Comment on Maybe Trump's Presidency Will Make Everything So Awful It Will Facilitate Actual Positive Change Nationwide 3 days ago:
OP said “maybe something good will come out of this” and you said look at history, the best that will happen is some minor temporary improvement. I pointed out several significant long lasting advances. I don’t see where anything you said here disproves that.
As I said, yes, there are significant problems we need to address. But being negative to the point of denying reality isn’t some act of resistance, it’s capitulation. Telling people there’s no hope helps the enemy.
- Comment on Maybe Trump's Presidency Will Make Everything So Awful It Will Facilitate Actual Positive Change Nationwide 3 days ago:
Have you read U.S. history?
Despite the land of freedom hype, we started as a country where only land owning white men could vote, and slavery was law. As flawed as things are now (and there will always be a need to improve and fight injustice) slavery has been abolished, all men and women can vote, child labor abolished, 40 hour work week, gay marriage legal.
We should be realistic and honest about the bad things happening right now. But if we don’t believe it’s possible for things to get better (doomerism) then it’s much less likely they will, and believing that ignores the actual historical evidence.
- Comment on Messaging App Used by Mike Waltz, Trump Deportation Airline GlobalX Both Hacked in Separate Breaches 1 week ago:
I’ve seen more informative reporting from 404 media and others, Signal had more or less said they can’t guarantee security for third party apps. Which makes sense, I can’t guarantee a house I didn’t build is safe. The OP link also talks about how the hacked company is Oregon based, which is technically true that they’re registered there. But the reporting I had read indicated the company was founded and is run by a former Israeli security officer, and has offices in Israel.
- Comment on If I snapped you back in time 650 years right this very second, how would you use your current knowledge to succeed? 2 weeks ago:
Let’s skip the “I have no basic survival skills” part (also skipping disease) and assume we find a nearby group of humans. If you approach first contact carefully they’d probably let you live with them in exchange for labor, giving you time to learn the language.
I think I have enough ambient exposure to modern technology that I could contribute at least 3-4 major innovations to my group over a couple decades. The challenge would be conveying and implementing ideas more than remembering them. You’re not going to get back to modern standards of living in your remaining time traveled years no matter how much you remember, but what little you can impart to others would earn your keep.
I don’t know what all the innovations would be, but germ theory and pasteurization come to mind.
- Comment on Short summary of dumbphone market in 2025 2 weeks ago:
Yes, that’s kind of what I was getting at - having this cloud browser thing would be significantly worse for privacy than even a smart phone.
- Comment on The Tech That Safeguards the Conclave’s Secrecy 2 weeks ago:
Setting aside the financial management of the church, it’s one of the largest organizations in the world which tells people what the purpose of life is. Its members believe the person they’re selecting has authority from God to say what actions are right and wrong.
While I don’t personally believe that, hard not to see it’s a position of significant power and people have an interest in knowing or influencing the outcome.
- Comment on Short summary of dumbphone market in 2025 2 weeks ago:
Can you share what your reasons are for considering a dumb phone?
For me I’m probably not actually going to get one, but have idly thought about it. If I were to get one it would be to free me from the attention sink of web browsing and apps. So I don’t find it appealing to consider a dumb phone that still has web browsing but using some sort of work around.
- Comment on America is fucked 4 weeks ago:
He’s just demonstrating New York City is fucked, not America
- Comment on New modelling reveals full impact of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs – with the US hit hardest 5 weeks ago:
It’s not about exempting Russians specifically, it’s about bullying everyone into kissing Trump’s ring. If you run a business or a country you have to go kiss his ass in exchange for an exemption from tariffs.
- Comment on Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Striking Motorcyclists More Than Any Other Brand: New Analysis 5 weeks ago:
It’s helpful to remember that not everyone has seen the same stories you have. If we want something to change, like regulators not allowing dangerous products, then raising public awareness is important. Expressing surprise that not everyone knows about something can be counterproductive.
Going beyond that, wouldn’t the new information here be the statistics?
- Comment on California ballot measure named after Luigi Mangione would make it illegal to ‘delay, deny’ healthcare coverage: ‘Crazy’ 1 month ago:
That part isn’t in quotes, so I’d guess he didn’t call it sick himself.
- Comment on I'm leaving the US for good, anything I should do before I leave? 1 month ago:
Oh yeah, Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania is cool. Probably not “worth traveling there from some other state before leaving the country” cool, but cool. maps.app.goo.gl/SQp261ecxj7exAJy8
- Comment on Trump supporter Rick Fuze was arrested in CA for using a stun gun on peaceful protesters outside a Tesla dealership. The woman kicking this guy’s ass is a retired professor with 16,000 citations. 1 month ago:
Did they add a stun gun sound effect to that video? Seems way too loud and crisp from that distance
- Comment on I reckon this is the usage distribution of Lemmy servers that we'll end up with. 1 month ago:
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to argue centralization is a naturally occurring phenomenon. It’s everywhere. The U.S. left Afghanistan and was replaced by a different centralized entity. One could argue how decentralized those “tribes” were, but regardless, after the U.S. departure they recreated a similar structure.
Complexity comes hand in hand with size. The OP is a chart of the different email providers. Can an individual run their own email server? Yes. And doesn’t it get more difficult after a certain number of users and require hiring specialists? Yes. But still, such large services exist, and a majority of users turn to them.
If the fediverse lives there will always be small servers, but we can expect to see really big ones. If we don’t want them to be corporate recreations of gmail and yahoo and hotmail I’d argue we should figure out a platform co-op/worker co-op model, including the necessary funding and specialists.
- Comment on I reckon this is the usage distribution of Lemmy servers that we'll end up with. 1 month ago:
My argument isn’t about the fediverse specifically. It’s that centralization is a naturally occurring phenomenon, and the lack of friction resulting from centralization can make it more competitive.
What is the reason the cost per user of hosting a Lemmy server goes up after a few thousand users? If it were say, you need more expensive hardware, that doesn’t necessarily disprove my argument. Just because a bigger investment is needed doesn’t mean it’s not cheaper per user or not more competitive. Just that you or I don’t have the capital, or that we might see centralization bad because we have bad experiences with centralized entities.
Also just because something is more competitive doesn’t mean it’s morally or aesthetically more desirable. The specialized army fed and trained by an empire overruns the brave and happy tribe of hunter gatherers.
What I’m saying is since we know the phenomenon of centralization occurs, we should try to subvert it as much as possible by introducing democratic structures.
- Comment on I reckon this is the usage distribution of Lemmy servers that we'll end up with. 1 month ago:
We should have large semi-centralized services. But they should be democratically controlled.
Do you ever think about why cities form? Rural life has a lot of appealing characteristics, plus it’s the starting state of the world. Cities form because there is an advantage to size, proximity and specialization. If we had a new planet and completely evenly distributed the population across its land, we’d very quickly form cities regardless.
It’s the same with centralized services. It takes a lot of special knowledge and equipment to run an email service. The average Lemmy user may have those resources, but even here, how many of us run our own email servers?
It costs less per person in resources to add more users after the first one. So there’s an incentive to aggregate users together. And once you have a certain number of users, maybe you figure out some way to fund your operation, and you can pay more people to add features/capabilities. Soon your entity not only has more users, it’s more appealing than a plan vanilla email service, and you get even more users. You’re doing it cheaper and better than the DIYers.
I think centralization and size are naturally occurring. We should think about ways to exist and benefit from them, so something like Gmail but run as a worker cooperative.
- Comment on Would it be a bad idea to show up at a protest outside a Tesla dealership with a sign that says "Deny Musk, Defund Doge, Depose Trump"? 1 month ago:
You’re doing all the stuff you suggested too, right?
- Comment on Having a baby? Use this one weird trick! 2 months ago:
Why would citizenship be based on who your parents are?
- Comment on James Harrison: Australian whose blood saved 2.4 million babies dies 2 months ago:
Rare someone has such a one-sided positive legacy
- Comment on In first, private US spaceship lands upright on Moon 2 months ago:
I’m all for a balance between public and private space missions. That said, this mission was run by a different company from SpaceX, and I’m not clear how this would be called junk while a government operated mission wouldn’t be junk. The article also mentions this mission is in partnership with NASA.
- Comment on If we want to have any power vs. watching helplessly while people in charge fuck everything up, we should focus on democratic workplaces. Not just unions, workers should own and control the business 2 months ago:
Also being at a worker coop doesn’t mean you have to sit in company meetings all day. For large organizations like Mondragon workers vote for representatives in an assembly, which then appoints a general manager.
Also also, an owner who cares is a single point of failure/leverage. If they fall on hard times personally or just want to retire, they can decide to sell the business out from under workers to a venture capital firm, or just to another business with a less benevolent owner.
- Comment on If we want to have any power vs. watching helplessly while people in charge fuck everything up, we should focus on democratic workplaces. Not just unions, workers should own and control the business 2 months ago:
You’re right, private owners who care are better than private owners who don’t care.
Worker owned and controlled companies are preferable (not just ESOPs where decisions are still not made democratically) because democracy allows for error correction. Even the most benevolent king still has a limited amount of attention, information and decision making ability.
- If we want to have any power vs. watching helplessly while people in charge fuck everything up, we should focus on democratic workplaces. Not just unions, workers should own and control the businesslemmy.world ↗Submitted 2 months ago to [deleted] | 11 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I’ve seen you say a few places in this thread that reducing caloric intake is related to eugenics. That’s a pretty strong claim to make without any evidence. Can you share any?
- Comment on What happened to Pez? 2 months ago:
I liked how pez tasted back in the day at least
- Comment on The State of Lemmy (drama) 3 months ago:
First, I think OP is making a big deal where it’s not necessary. And the US as a nation has done many fucked up things.
That said, thinking about people not nations, I’m American and I didn’t elect a felon. Yes, 77 million voters picked Trump, which is shitty and doesn’t make sense. 75 million voters chose Kamala. And around 110 million people of voting age didn’t vote at all. (Which also doesn’t make sense to me)
But you can imagine for those 75 million people it’s not going to feel good to be painted with the same brush, and it’s not kind to do so.
- Comment on I never realized this 4 months ago:
Hyphenated names are too long. One of my good friends has one and people just refer to him and his siblings by the initials of their last name, like “Tim MP”
- Comment on I never realized this 4 months ago:
That’s great we’re in agreement. Your comment said “… a lot of people who published research before their marriage continue to publish under the same name even if they changed their name.”
So I didn’t read your comment as saying woman shouldn’t change their name, because you’re describing women changing their name, and then not using the new name in a specific context.
- Comment on I never realized this 4 months ago:
Sure it’s a headache. So why does the woman have to do it? I think either keep your names as is or both people change.
