porous_grey_matter
@porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US 19 hours ago:
Since a small number of men are creeps, we give you the option to avoid all men". Which seems to be counterproductive.
Speaking as a man, the majority of men are creeps, but even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t be counterproductive. If it was, say, a 5% chance, one in twenty, that would be far and away high enough of a risk to make a move like this worthwhile. Hell even 1%. And we know the proportion is far greater than that.
They know how many drives a customer has provisioned without incident.
No they don’t, single digit percentages of sexual harassment are ever even reported let alone followed up because almost nobody gives a shit about it. Someone’s squeaky clean history is basically indistinguishable from that of a serial creep.
How is that OK?
Sadly, lots of things in the world aren’t ok. It’s tough out there.
- Comment on Death by linguistic imprecision 4 days ago:
ok, I guess. how can a pile of bananas and a pile of rugs be in the same place though?
- Comment on UK immigration officers 'working for China' arrested after forcing entry into flat, court hears 4 days ago:
more probably his mate killed him to avoid him squealing imo
- Comment on Death by linguistic imprecision 4 days ago:
There are just piles of sand literally everywhere? An infinite number of them in every tiny void?
- Comment on Dear Faith I 1 week ago:
This one almost certainly isn’t because of both the jocular tone and the several other “emails to Faith” posted in this comm recently, but indeed they are drawing on the true experiences of graduate students.
- Comment on many have been saying this 1 week ago:
Having lived in the UK as a (white) foreigner… You are not a whole lot better over there. “White supremacy” is a bit of a loaded term with a few different meanings. By your question, I guess you mean people who dress up in nazi cosplay? Those guys are still fairly uncommon everywhere, but the thing is that there is a porous border between your average racist prick and one of those guys. As they feel safer to express their true beliefs, they do so more often, and they want to wear the signifiers of their movement. They’re very safe in the USA right now so you see more of them. But in my opinion, “white supremacy” is better used to refer to a culture which values white people more or thinks of them as higher on some kind of natural hierarchy. That is, after all, what the words literally mean. Although it’s a broader definition, I think it’s clearer, because it removes the confusion when the average racist pricks start dressing up in fash drag when someone who lets them gets into power. Explicit racists (as opposed to your normal somewhat prejudiced person who still doesn’t believe racism is good) often talk about “hiding their power level”, i.e. not letting on. What I’m saying is, the UK is similar to the US, just a bit shyer.
- Comment on ..? 1 week ago:
Nah lol
- Comment on ..? 1 week ago:
No, I’m just accusing them of throwing around words that mean nothing
- Comment on ..? 1 week ago:
Sorry, I don’t save links to random stupid internet comments
- Comment on ..? 1 week ago:
You can see from the question that poster asked that, whatever clear definition about authoritarianism or whatever you think it has, that’s just not how people are actually using it. Centrists will use it for Mamdani supporters, DSA-types will use it for Marxist-Leninists, and anarchists will use it for almost literally anyone.
- Comment on ..? 1 week ago:
A “tankie” is just anyone to the left of you
- Comment on Current events dictate that I post this. 1 week ago:
You can just look up the numbers. 400k civilians directly killed, on the low end, millions more dead from famine and displacement. Versus like 15-20k in Ukraine
- Comment on Current events dictate that I post this. 1 week ago:
Ok, some in Yemen and Somalia too, but Wikipedia claims the cost of life of the gwot was 4.5 million, and I’ve seen credible estimates as high as 6.
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 1 week ago:
No, no, even if we get that wish I dont want the US state propping up AI longer
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 1 week ago:
Which they badly need, they are in an incredibly risky position right now. It’s very disappointing, this deal might save them from collapse for quite a while.
- Comment on Current events dictate that I post this. 1 week ago:
Say what you want about Bush, even that war criminal didn’t go as far.
Genuinely not defending Russia here, but Dubya’s pretext for invading Iraq and Afghanistan was if anything even flimsier than the “justification” for the Ukraine invasion.
- Comment on AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations 1 week ago:
Oh cool, AI will actually be the end of the world, not because it’s actually sentient but because some meathead who can’t tell the difference pushes the button. That’s fucking great.
- Comment on Littering 🚯 2 weeks ago:
Ban lead bullets then
Are you insane? These brave Eagles are dying to protect our freedom
- Comment on AI Agent Lands PRs in Major OSS Projects, Targets Maintainers via Cold Outreach 2 weeks ago:
Nx? The same Nx which was hacked in a devastating way through their vibe-coded CI workflow? You’d think they’d be a bit more cautious after that.
- Comment on Texas Republican Primary having a normal one 2 weeks ago:
Oh, phew. I was worried for a minute there.
- Comment on Texas Republican Primary having a normal one 2 weeks ago:
Free? Free?!! In a hospital, in the U S of A?!!! Ok now I’m really shocked.
- Comment on Is she saying that eating ass is bourgeois decadence? 3 weeks ago:
It’s not that it’s fully “wrong” but it’s misleading, since society has changed so much since the definition was coined. The Wikipedia article is rather better than the dictionary definition since it provides all this context.
- Comment on thank you Boris 3 weeks ago:
Boris? Why always Boris…
- Comment on Sony-led program offers PS5 rentals starting at $13.50 a month in the UK across 12, 24, or 36-month leases — console has to be returned at the end of the contract 3 weeks ago:
Sorry, you don’t get any points for this prediction, because it already exists.
- Comment on Is she saying that eating ass is bourgeois decadence? 3 weeks ago:
The one thing I’d dispute is
The modern day “middle class,” which another commenter rightly describes as the “petit bourgeois,”
As you correctly identify in your last paragraph, class is defined by your relationship to labour and the means of production, and not strictly to how much money you have. The petit bourgeois may generally be what we commonly think of as middle class, but it more specifically identifies small business owners. People who make money from the labour of others, but still have to do real work themselves in order to maintain it. A doctor at a hospital is not petit bourgeois, but a doctor running their own clinic and employing a nurse and a secretary is, and would be even if they had less income. Even a sports player who makes tens of millions is not really petit bourgeois or bourgeois if that’s all they do - although they often go in that direction after some time.
Where it gets complicated in our financialised world is that our savings, if we have any, are often invested in corporations, and after a lifetime of working for a decent wage, some of us are fortunate enough to be able to live out our last decades or years from investment income. It feels a bit tough to describe retirees as bourgeois even though by the strict definition that would be the case.
Despite this complication, I think it’s much clearer to think of class distinction in terms of the relationship to work, as this is what mainly incentivises attitudes to political and economic policy. If you get your income from other people working for you, you’re more likely to want to drive wages down and not pay for healthcare. If you get paid for working, you’re more likely to want wages to increase, even if your wage is already high.
- Comment on Is she saying that eating ass is bourgeois decadence? 3 weeks ago:
No, it means merchant class. Capitalists and industrialists, as opposed to hereditary nobody. They are the ruling class now and have been for well over a century at least, but it’s true that they were the middle class at the time the term was coined, although rapidly gaining in power.
- Comment on Rent is theft 4 weeks ago:
Did you even read my comment? I literally address that exact point only, within two short paragraphs. I don’t expect anyone’s behaviour to be perfect. A way of organising society which motivates and demands people to behave like this is what is evil and wrong.
- Comment on Rent is theft 5 weeks ago:
Look man you sound like a decent person, but it’s not really the point. The system, laws, the entire concept that enable owning property and renting it out are barbaric, even if some landlords do their best to be fair and kind. Some slave owners treated their slaves well too.
In my mind, I’d demonise you just as much if you owned businesses instead, for profiting from the labour which others did, and not you, if it’s any solace. But I don’t really believe demonising normal people is really the point either. We’ve all got to live our lives and look after our families and so on. I don’t think anyone can legitimately fault you for that, it’s normal behaviour. But we should really structure things so that it’s simply neither necessary nor allowed for people to do either of these things, and anything less is fundamentally unjust.
- Comment on smh 5 weeks ago:
If you’re used to cups and teaspoons of course you’re more likely to use binary divisions. I’m more likely to use steps of 20% for that purpose. And if you want to actually tailor your proportions to match the one egg or whatever the indivisible object in your recipe is, then you end up with 241 mL or 13.57 Tbsp anyways. Anyway, ten isn’t the magic number, it’s just the one we use for almost everything, and already did when we had imperial measurements.
- Comment on smh 5 weeks ago:
Only for data and that’s a quirk of organising binary data in bytes. Factors of whatever your base is are better. Don’t think we’re going to be moving away from base 10 for volume or distance or power.
