Jtotheb
@Jtotheb@lemmy.world
- Comment on Facebook advertised a professional child kidnapping service to me 2 days ago:
Realizing the power imbalance inherent in contract law was a major radicalizing force in my life. I believe Hobbesian and Lockean theories of social contracts are still so widely taught in U.S. civics classes (uncertain of their global reach in schools) because it’s important to convince kids early on that people choose to enter into these agreements with larger power structures for their own good. If that view isn’t ingrained deep within your self then you’ll realize how absurd it is to enter into a legally binding contract with a party that has all the power in the relationship. Why would you?! They write the language, they limit your rights, they reserve the right to change the agreement, they reserve the right to terminate the arrangement. Companies, countries, it’s all from the same playbook. If you break it, fines or jail. If they break it, good luck. If it’s not enumerated in the document it doesn’t matter because they fall back on their power to do what they please anyway. It’s wielded as a weapon that forces you to accept the status quo under threat of retaliation. How do you assert your right to anything in this system? Playing along by paying for someone to represent you and asserting your belief in and support of the legal structure that has disenfranchised you, of course. You still don’t even have a seat at the table.
- Comment on Shooting an unarmed woman who was just trying to walk home: just LAPD things 2 days ago:
I was replying with something snarky like ‘hey Alexa how many people did we kill in the Middle East while I was big chilling’ so thank you for producing an actual productive response first
- Comment on Shooting an unarmed woman who was just trying to walk home: just LAPD things 2 days ago:
Rubber bullets are sold under the legal pretext that they’re acceptable to use in this fashion, while the manufacturer and the police department and probably every lawyer and judge in the country knows they’re just going to shoot at people.
- Comment on Infrared contact lenses let you see in the dark 3 weeks ago:
Yes, this includes ultraviolet light.
Why? Does it also include x-rays? That’s only one step further on the electromagnetic spectrum. Seems arbitrary to stop at ultraviolet waves! Does that mean thin sheets of steel aren’t opaque? Or is it the term “opaque”, without any modifiers attached, colloquially used to describe whether something permits visible light through?
For the record, they’re not opaque. The article actually says they work better if you close your eyes.
- Comment on Poor guy 2 months ago:
I don’t know that there are many white capitalists in South Africa who deserve their money more than any black individual living there
- Comment on Poor guy 3 months ago:
Thank you for the clarification.
- Comment on Poor guy 3 months ago:
In what sense is he correct? It’s not because he’s not black, you’ve just cited the workaround—and it’s not like he’s a guy who takes a principled stand against nepotism.
- Comment on Facebook Cybertruck Owners Group Copes With Relentless Mockery 3 months ago:
A lot of core concepts in Christianity are incompatible with being white in America. It’s a religion for the oppressed being practiced by the oppressors. They’re the Pharisees. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to figure out how to see themselves as the lepers and the Jews.
- Comment on Why can't we go back to small phones? 3 months ago:
Well yeah, the people who want a small reliable phone are unlikely to replace them every year for no discernible reason. Cue more articles and comments about how there’s no sale data to support the idea that people want small phones! The odds are stacked against us.
- Comment on nets 3 months ago:
It’s not bad, and I didn’t claim it to be bad. It’s not relevant in the same way Dr Thunder and Pibb Xtra aren’t leading to a soft drink crisis in the USA—they’re a small part of a much bigger problem.
To carry on with this dumbass analogy, it would be misleading to argue for a ban on off-brand sodas while continuing to mass produce Sprite, Pepsi, and Diet Coke, and it lets big businesses off the hook for their destruction. Same with letting industries shovel untold plastic waste into the oceans behind our backs while making more visible efforts to ban much smaller amounts back on land.
Also, we’re not just worried about plastic because it ends up on beaches. That is, again, missing the bigger picture. It’s also missing why those items in particular end up on beaches, which is because of local littering.
If you ban plastic straws from European beaches and say job well done, the planet will never notice.
- Comment on nets 3 months ago:
This is a list of end-consumer items put together by a government body beholden to fishing and other industries. And it’s not even about pollution levels, it’s specifically about beach pollution. Plastic lids on cartons of heavy cream are “also a problem” if we focus only on reducing plastic waste in the kitchen, but implying it’s even relevant compared to industrial plastic waste is disingenuous
- Comment on Pluralistic: Bluesky and enshittification (02 Nov 2024) Cory Doctorow 6 months ago:
Cory Doctorow actually coined the term, so a decent strategy given how poorly it’s used would be to trust its use any time you read him and substitute it every other time
- Comment on ‘Do not pet’: Why are robot dogs patrolling Mar-A-Lago? 6 months ago:
They have not been officially found guilty in the court of law [designed to protect them]—how dare you besmirch their good name
- Comment on Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics 7 months ago:
Okay, so we’re quoting and refuting line by line then.
I refuse to believe I’m smarter than you or anyone else.
It is highly unlikely that you’re the dumbest person alive. Amusing sentence though!
These seem like obvious solutions.
Everything you suggest seems self evident because you supply the evidence yourself.
wanna be done so suddenly
I’ve regretted talking to you ever since I started! You’re rude and I would never choose to continue interacting with you in real life if this was the first time I ever heard you talk.
- Comment on Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics 7 months ago:
You know, we can talk about how batteries aren’t removable in most phones anymore, about whether or not the act of suddenly buying prepaid phones isn’t itself incriminating, any number of factors, but I really only replied to you because you were rude, not because I wanted to talk about it.
- Comment on Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics 7 months ago:
Yes, yes. If you want to avoid being tracked by the government buy a Faraday bag. Thank you for the valuable information. I’m in awe.
- Comment on Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics 7 months ago:
- Comment on Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics 7 months ago:
You really think you came up with an airtight solution to device tracking that nobody in the industry has considered on a whim?
- Comment on Sympathy for their PTSD 7 months ago:
The Nuremberg Trials are a great example of how you don’t hang if you provide enough value to the military-industrial complex, and a terrible example of full stop no excuses. Seems ill suited to be a foundation for a moral philosophy.
- Comment on Honey 7 months ago:
Bee point taken, I should have said something like ‘a drop in the bucket’, the point I intended to convey is that they don’t really advance the argument that there are many such animal products. Nor does saying oh and some goat milk. That statement of yours is what I specifically disagreed with.
The point about quantities, that’s my point too. Farmers in the Patagonia region may be able to sustainably eat meat, drink ethical milk, whatever. Not people in the US, not in most of Europe. Yeah, so I actually just bought a huge container of local honey from our local grocer, maybe two hours ago. I don’t cut honey out. But that’s not grounds for me to claim there are a bunch of other animal products that are also better than eating some nuts and beans for protein
- Comment on Honey 7 months ago:
many animal products that do less harm than plant products
Can you cite some other than honey? Most animal products require animals which require, well, plants. Plants that cause harm in the exact way you described. And more of them than just humans eating the crops directly.
- Comment on It’s Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word 8 months ago:
Which group of people uncritically magnified his voice and others like it for years? Tech journalism builds the legacies of people like Musk, Bankman-Fried and Altman.
- Comment on Installation 8 months ago: