porous_grey_matter
@porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Looooooong 4 days ago:
But then it wouldn’t rhyme with extend :(
- Comment on What's wrong with Ellen DeGeneres? 6 days ago:
lmao is this the english version of the flying lotus copypasta
- Comment on I don't think they're alone on one 6 days ago:
I’m having some trouble understanding your comment. Are you somehow using both meanings of CBT simultaneously? Would you explain?
- Comment on Most of plant based leather uses a lot of polyurethane 1 week ago:
obvious troll is obvious lol
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 2 weeks ago:
No, I understand just fine, we have income taxes here too, they’re just lower. This means that the tax system is fairer because richer people pay more. It also means that people are more incentivised to work, to contribute to the economy, and to invest. I don’t really see what something being taxed a first or second time has to do with anything. What matters is the overall tax burden, which although hard to calculate exactly, is lower here for the large majority of people but distributed more towards richer people - not those with more income but those with more wealth. It may be true that Americans would freak out about such a thing, but that is merely due to quasireligious ideas about taxation from national myth propaganda, not about the actual effect it would have on their lives, and it reveals fundamental defects in the American character.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 2 weeks ago:
I currently live in a country which has this. Income taxes are correspondingly very low and public services are extremely good. I’m very satisfied with the arrangement, yes. You seem preoccupied with some kind of religious sanctity of your “savings account” without actually considering what the implications of such a policy are, that’s too bad.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 2 weeks ago:
Nope, not only is it not stupid, it is pretty much the best possible taxation system unless your explicit goal is to keep poor people poor and rich people rich.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 2 weeks ago:
Wealth taxes in Switzerland start at ~150k and include the family residence. And capital doesn’t flee. It’s a great implementation and income taxes are lower commensurately so that it works for people.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 2 weeks ago:
Yes, but you’ll only pay like a thousand a year on those savings, and your costs will go down to 30,000 thanks to improved infrastructure, healthcare, etc.
- Comment on Death by linguistic imprecision 5 weeks 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 5 weeks ago:
more probably his mate killed him to avoid him squealing imo
- Comment on Death by linguistic imprecision 5 weeks ago:
There are just piles of sand literally everywhere? An infinite number of them in every tiny void?
- Comment on Dear Faith I 5 weeks 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 month 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 month ago:
Nah lol
- Comment on ..? 1 month ago:
No, I’m just accusing them of throwing around words that mean nothing
- Comment on ..? 1 month ago:
Sorry, I don’t save links to random stupid internet comments
- Comment on ..? 1 month 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 month ago:
A “tankie” is just anyone to the left of you
- Comment on Current events dictate that I post this. 1 month 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 month 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 Current events dictate that I post this. 1 month 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 Littering 🚯 1 month ago:
Ban lead bullets then
Are you insane? These brave Eagles are dying to protect our freedom
- Comment on Is she saying that eating ass is bourgeois decadence? 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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? 1 month 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? 1 month 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 me when lower category theory 2 months ago:
Before checking the comments I was like “wait is this real maths or just ramblings from some mentally ill tech bros” but I guess it’s real?
- Comment on smh 2 months 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.