shikitohno

@shikitohno@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Withdrawal is going to make people go mad⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t think you were, I was more saying that the loss of many of those jobs that had been outsourced in the pursuit of cheap stuff means that, even if Trump’s proposed tariffs were effective at bringing those jobs back, it might not matter because they would still cost more than most residents of the US would be able to afford. At least, with current working conditions, many of these goods would simply cost more than people would be willing to pay, as we’ve been collectively conditioned to want as much stuff as possible, as cheap as possible. Domestic production of so many goods would require a drastic shift in consumer habits to even have a chance at being viable in the long term, but they absolutely couldn’t do the sort of volume that places like China has and be able to sell at a profit, barring the implementation of Chinese-style working conditions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Withdrawal is going to make people go mad⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  nor the desire to build their own shit

  I would say that we’ve also largely lost the means to afford stuff built here, in large part as a consequence of our endless pursuit of cheap crap while scraping the bottom of the barrel with outsourcing. Even if you want to buy domestically-made goods, since we’ve lost so many of those good union jobs, especially in manufacturing, we no longer have the means to pay what it costs to make such a product with American workers. Especially if people intend to continue with their current consumerist trends.

  I’m making $20/hour at the moment. If I want to buy American, union-made shoes, it’ll run me $400 a pair, on the lower end. I think it’s pretty reasonable to have a pair of work boots, a pair of regular shoes for wearing out and about, and a pair of dress shoes, which at that low end will run me 37.5% of my monthly gross pay. Now do the same for domestically produced clothing, and you’ve probably run up a bill of several month’s pay, just to have enough outfits to last you a single week, leaving aside coats, seasonal clothing, or formal attire. We’re either going to have to sharply curtail our purchasing and focus on buying a smaller amount of goods meant to last as long as possibly, or the sadly more likely scenario, we’ll see the establishment of domestic sweatshops to fuel the consumerist impulses of what remains of the middle class and up. Whether we’ll just go even more insane in our treatment of the poor here, or use prison labor and undocumented migrants “pending” deportation in these sweatshops remains to be seen, but Americans have demonstrated we shortsightedly value our ability to accumulate cheap trash over anything else.

  I’d love to be proven wrong, and see a growth of strong unions and domestic production leading to a resurgence in American craftsmanship again, but the current environment is less than amenable to this outcome, to put it mildly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Use Zotero⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I just do Auctex instead of orgmode, bud this is the way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Use Zotero⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Zotero is awesome, and I’d also recommend the browser extension with an account. Account is free, but it’ll let you save any web sources with all the metadata you need and sync it to the main program.

  Zotero in combination with LaTeX and Biber have saved me so much time. Especially when I had a crazy professor who would make last minute changes to style requirements. I remember we had a paper to write that they initially said “Just cite with whatever format you want, it’s fine as long as they info is there.” Cool, write my ten pages or whatever with footnotes containing short citations and full citations available in the bibliography at the end. The night before the paper was due, “Actually, I need all papers to use APA citations or you’ll be docked points.”. No problem, just change my citation style at the top of my LaTeX doc and tell it to reprocess the paper, all the citations fixed in about 5 seconds, without even needing to learn the ins and outs of APA formatting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This Italian "newspaper" wanted to depict the "indian heritage" of an US candidate. Chennai, Cherokee, the same.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, my experience has been that a lot of countries whose residents tell me racism is an American problem and we should stop trying to project it onto other societies happen to live in countries with huge problems with it that just aren’t explicitly spoken about in the same terms.

  I had a Brazilian friend tell me race is not all that important in Brazil and that he’s tired of Americans assuming it is. I periodically have to ask him, “Do you read Brazilian news, bro?” and send some links that make it blatantly obvious that racism is alive and well down there.

  You also just get people who have bought into very pervasive attitudes in countries that justify/explain away racism when it’s encountered.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon saves their vacation days⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Aside from this, at least in my state, if you opt to cash out your vacation days without taking them, they get taxed at a higher rate. I used to tell my teams, “If you take your vacation days instead cashing them out, you get more money after taxes and you don’t have to be here, so please just take your vacation time.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linguistics⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would argue the main benefits are to teach people how to effectively switch registers as the context demands, and to expose them to a range of language they likely wouldn’t ordinarily encounter in their daily lives. English teachers could do to lose the judgmental aspect of “This is the one true way to speak English, the way you talk amongst yourselves is wrong and you need do stop,” but there’s a definite value in teaching students, “This is a way to write/speak clearly and effectively that will be understood by quite nearly every other educated English speaker you might encounter.”

  As far as exposure to a broader range of language than one normally encounters in their life, I saw the importance of this first hand with many of my coworkers who were heritage speakers of Spanish. It’s not my native language, but it was my primary work language for a good 5 years, and I wound up getting put on interpretation duties for our safety meetings over a native speaker with pretty limited formal education in Spanish. For topics to do with daily life, family, friends, etc, this guy would be able to speak much more naturally than I could. I might not say something that was exactly wrong, but perhaps I would be too formal or make odd word choices he wouldn’t. The problem was, he completely lacked any technical and professional vocabulary, and had no concept of what words/phrases were unique to his own country and what alternatives might be more widely understood.

  We would have safety meetings once a night, and they would have topics like, “When a forklift has its forks in the air, don’t walk beneath it, as hydraulic failure could lead to injury or death.”. He translated that one night as “Cuando la vaina del pasillo tiene esa vaina de en frente en el aire, no pasen por debajo de la vaina. Es peligroso.” Basically “When the thing in the hall has the thing in front in the air, don’t walk under the thing. It’s dangerous.” Best case, he might say “El forlift,” but he would never land on “el montacargas,” or even think to look it up. Some of his wilder attempts at interpretation didn’t work for anyone, and the ones where he just used a Spanglish version of technical terms only worked for other coworkers who already knew at least a bit of English, and probably didn’t really need the translation that much to begin with. Unfortunately, we had a fair number of employees who were monolingual Spanish speakers that he found himself just completely unable to communicate with effectively.

  Granted, not everyone takes full advantage of it, but English classes do (or at least should) expose you to a broad range of the language, as it’s used in various contexts and forms, while also furnishing students with the ability to expand upon that and adapt to new contexts on their own in the future. Failure to do so leaves students with stunted linguistic and communicative abilities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We owe them⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Keep a special lookout for pear- or almond-like scents, which can be evidence of cyanide.

  Maybe get a few other people to smell it, for this one, bonus points if they’re entirely unrelated to you. Not everyone can smell it, and there may be a genetic component to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UAW loses Alabama union vote seen as bellwether for organizing autoworkers in the South⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lack of legal recognition and protections? I’m not really aware of any states that have provisions to recognize a union that only comprises a quarter or a third of employees doing a specific job for an employer. Closest I’ve seen was places where different jobs were unionized and non-union positions, like one job where all the drivers got a union, but not any of the warehouse staff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Congrats to all 2024 college graduates!⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Especially if you aren’t financially that well off or on a good career track, I think it’s really appealing just for the stability it affords. My current landlord has been a pretty good guy for us, but if I owned my apartment rather than renting, I wouldn’t have to worry that I’ll suddenly need to pay a ton more money if he dies and his kids decide to jack up the rent, or worse, having to uproot my life entirely and move out because of someone else’s whims.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re going to say Hamas’ attack was an attempt to draw the US into a war, I think that falls a bit flat. When was the last time the US did anything beyond provide the same sort of aid it currently gives Israel? Especially in light of Iran not giving into Israel’s provocation to attempt kick up a regional conflict that would draw the US in, I think this accusations is lacking.

  If they wanted to draw the US into the conflict, why would they just push for one large attack and then just let Israel steamroll Palestinian territories while demonstrating they can get on with things just fine without the US doing anything but provide the same sort of weapons aid they always have? Why not take the bait with the most recent provocation?

  Besides, even Israeli publications admit that it has been Israeli policy to prop up Hamas, so this smacks even more of propaganda efforts to distract from Israel’s culpability in creating this situation.

  Yes, Iran has provided backing to many of these sorts of groups, but they’re hardly unique in this in the region. Why is trying to kick up a regional conflict when Iran does this, but Israel gets a pass on buying oil from ISIS and aggravating the situation there? Heck, Israel’s past actions in Lebanon helped kick off the founding of Hezbollah when they overstepped what they could get away with under the pretense of chasing Palestinian forces over the border.

  The truth is necessary to arrive at a sound opinion, and Iran are no angels, but there’s far too much handwaving away of Israel’s role in creating the current situation while demonizing Iran with exaggerated capabilities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨salmon⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably not photoshopped, more likely just different species and the one on the bottom has been butterflied and laid with the meat touching the ground so it looks much larger. Neither one has really started to change that much at the point these pictures were taken. Towards the end of the season, at least for west coast salmon, they’ll often get a lot leaner and their scales turn a super vivid red. As they lose their fat reserves, the meat also becomes much more delicate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Which Iranian attack is this that’s supposed to have started a war to drag in the US? Their most recent attack on Israeli targets was in response to Israel attacking them in a third country, and Israel has been trying to provoke them into a response that would kick off a war the US would get involved with to draw attention from their ongoing genocide in Gaza.