alvvayson
@alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Anon is jealous 1 week ago:
Yep.
Entertainers get the big bucks because millions and billions of normal people spend a lot of time and money being entertained by them.
And we are always looking for the cool and funny next thing. And hawk tua girl legitimately entertained millions of us for 30 seconds.
- Comment on Threw a wrestling watch party, made special food, and was very disappointed in the outcome. 2 months ago:
Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it’s not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don’t invite them.
If people aren’t hungry, then they aren’t hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP’s intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don’t want to eat too much.
And as for the two that did not showed up. It’s a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.
If they did reconfirm and still didn’t show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.
Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.
But it’s also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.
- Comment on Why do big corporations get to claim losses, but small businesses can't? 2 months ago:
Because they manage to attract investment.
As long as investors are willing to give cash in exchange for equity, a company can operate on that cash and run at a loss.
- Comment on TikTok Algorithms Actively Suppress Criticism of Chinese Regime, Study Finds 2 months ago:
Yeah, the biases of TikTok are pretty clear.
But it’s also clear that western owned sites are filled with western propaganda. It’s insane how Zionist reddit appears, even when the demographic on reddit is actually much more progressive/left.
But people just get banned who post something critical and there are obvious bot farms heavily manipulating the voting there.
The same is true of the mainstream media.
I have therefore switched from being anti-TikTok to being pro-TikTok.
Lemmy is better, but only because it’s new and the powers-that-be haven’t really refined their approach. You can already see though that lemmy.world has changed, with people getting banned and such.
I had comments removed on lemmy.world that were very mild.
Which is why I moved to dbzer0.
Back to TikTok, if it takes an adversarial superpower to get back free speech in the West, then so be it.
- Comment on Dutch toilets 3 months ago:
Yep, but nowadays they are losing popularity. I don’t even know if you can still find them.
- Comment on Checkmate, Atheists 3 months ago:
The humiliation of losing to a black woman.
The past months the mood in America has been: not these two old geezers again.
I am honestly optimistic that it’s going to be a landslide for the Democrats without Biden. Americans are just sick of Trump and they didn’t want Biden to run again.
So the Democrats are giving the people what they want, while the Republicans are trying to force feed them something they don’t want.
Let’s see how this plays out.
- Comment on Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments | The Daily Show 4 months ago:
Indeed - and I really hope it passes.
I thought about mentioning it in my previous comment. But basically, it’s another example that States hold most of the power. The States actually have the power to effectively replace the current system with a national popular vote if they choose.
Other examples are the IRV in Alaska and the district system in Maine and Nebraska.
- Comment on Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments | The Daily Show 4 months ago:
Both elections exactly prove my point.
The federal system is set up to favor State power, which is why the US presidential election isn’t decided by popular vote. By design, Wyoming and California are considered equals in many respects.
It’s a bad system, but it’s very much entrenched in the constitution.
And it also requires critical mass. It’s basically impossible to enact meaningful change with a 50-55% majority. You need 60% or more to get big changes. And a majority of states.
- Comment on Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments | The Daily Show 4 months ago:
A somewhat less pessimistic take: the system is set up to be self-stable.
And it was also designed so that States would have most of the power, not the Federal government.
At various points in history the common people did get benefits. New Deal. Universal suffrage. Civil rights. Abolition.
But it always requires a critical mass of the population to support change.
- Comment on Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments | The Daily Show 4 months ago:
John Stewart always finds the best way to express what I’m feeling.
Regardless of the outcome, this election will go down as a shit stain on history.
I just hope the outcome doesn’t turn it into explosive diarrhea.
- Comment on Unfortunate post placement 4 months ago:
Unfortunate reality, but headline placement is quite OK.
- Comment on So is Israel just going to finish Palestine off? 4 months ago:
I know a lot of people don’t like the American First Past the Post system, but to be honest, even in a proportional system like here in the Netherlands, you end up with very similar dynamics.
Truth is, progressives are always a small minority, in every country. Because they are always ahead of the curve on change.
In the US, this means that you only get a handful of progressives in the most progressive districts and never a really progressive national government.
In the Netherlands, this means progressives are always represented, but need to compromise to form a government. And often, they even get skipped and the centrist and conservative parties form a coalition.
Truth be told, Biden is as progressive as you could hope to get in the USA.
And, while I do think it is important to criticize him - and even threaten to not vote for him - to enable him to move more towards the left, it is also important to vote for him.
Progressives always win, not through getting majorities, but because they have the right ideas and eventually the other parties catch up to them.
For recent examples, gay marriage in the USA or marihuana legalization are now law in the USA.
I am 100% confident that American policy on Israel will also shift thanks to progressive voices. And it will not require a progressive majority.
- Comment on So is Israel just going to finish Palestine off? 4 months ago:
Americans still care about the price of oil, which is set in a global market and where Saudi-Arabia and Russia have more influence than the USA.
Obviously, the extremist Arabs that overthrew their own leaders are also to blame. Where did I deny that?
- Comment on So is Israel just going to finish Palestine off? 4 months ago:
I don’t think you really have a lot of choices to be honest.
You’d first need to get new candidates to win a primary and then a general and the required majorities are lacking almost everywhere.
A more fruitful approach is to actually change public opinion.
It’s a long uphill battle, but it’s happening.
- Comment on So is Israel just going to finish Palestine off? 4 months ago:
For decades, Israel and the US (and European countries) have pursued a policy to destabilize middle eastern regimes.
People don’t realize this, but there was a wave of Arab nationalism that was killed by sponsoring Islamic extremists. Had that not happened, the middle east would be much more secular today than it is.
Israel attacking and destabilizing Lebanon and Syria and the US maintaining a dictator in Egypt are part of this strategy.
In turn, this leads to hate towards the West and Israel by the Muslims affected.
It won’t stop as long as American voters care much more about gas prices than about human rights. American politicians are willing to sponsor genocide to have some control on oil prices in order to win elections.
- Comment on ‘We deserve more’: US workers’ share of the pie dwindles 6 months ago:
You are stuck at step 1, I invite you to move on to step 2 and actually start looking at how we are gonna solve problems.
You can go back all the way to colonial times and feudal times and even earlier to discuss how societies have become less egalitarian since the invention of agriculture.
But we are here, right now and it’s best to identify the actions we can take today, for a brighter tomorrow.
- Comment on ‘We deserve more’: US workers’ share of the pie dwindles 6 months ago:
Not changing history. Just saying that democrats had all the power they could want and failed to implement change to make things better. Literally after running on a campaign of Change.
- Comment on ‘We deserve more’: US workers’ share of the pie dwindles 6 months ago:
The people blaming Reagan are fighting a 3 decade old culture war.
Fact is, things really weren’t all that bad in the 80s and 90s.
They only really started getting bad after the financial crisis in 2008.
And which party got both the presidency and a majority in Congress that year? Hint: doesn’t start with R.
- Comment on ‘We deserve more’: US workers’ share of the pie dwindles 6 months ago:
Dude, I’m really sorry, but the 19th century sent a letter by pony express and they want their economic theory back.
There are struggling “capitalists” that own their own little manufacturing company, restaurant, hair salon or other small business.
And then there are rich as hell “workers” like Taylor Swift who have become billionaires through their own labour. She can fill football stadiums full of people willing to pay top dollar to see her perform, I simply can’t.
And I think most people don’t have a problem with Taylor being a billionaire.
But the problem arises when middle class people pay half of what they have in tax, while rich people have effective tax rates of <10%. Jeff Bezos had a five figure tax bill as he became the richest man in the world.
A million middle class Americans making $100K are still out earning Jeff by a huge margin, but they are collectively also paying way more tax than Jeff, so Jeff can keep investing his money, while those million Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
- Comment on ‘We deserve more’: US workers’ share of the pie dwindles 6 months ago:
Well said, I regret that I have but one upvote to give you, PP boy.
- Comment on ‘We deserve more’: US workers’ share of the pie dwindles 6 months ago:
It’s not just Reagan. The same is happening all over the world, including Europe. And his policies were 40 years ago. At some point, we need to own our own problems.
The real issue is that the rich people worldwide have figured out how to mostly avoid paying taxes, while the middle class bears the brunt of taxation - which prevents them from becoming wealthy - and the lower class gets nothing.
That wasn’t Reagan, it would have happened even if FDR had become an immortal vampire and had the New Deal lasted a century.
What we really need is to start taxing the rich and to greatly reduce taxation on the middle class. And we need to really get serious about it.
The US government can spend millions to track down and kill a Shepard in Syria, but they can’t find the capital gains on Jeff Bezos portfolio.
- Comment on Life was better in the nineties and noughties, say most Britons 7 months ago:
I presume you’re an American then.
It wasn’t that bad in Europe.
- Comment on Life was better in the nineties and noughties, say most Britons 7 months ago:
We are talking about the 90s though, not the 60s.
- Comment on Life was better in the nineties and noughties, say most Britons 7 months ago:
The difference is that even young people say life was better when boomers were young.
Higher wages, cheaper housing, lower cost of living.