GreenBeard
@GreenBeard@lemmy.ca
- Comment on Why don’t tech bros wear suits? 1 day ago:
The word professional is so ambiguous as to be effectively meaningless, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to its original definition.
No one but the most shallow and superficial among us cares what you’re wearing. Thinking a suit does anything but make you look self-important and pretentious is an anachronism.
- Comment on Is it the American way to complain about the US, or is it that other countries aren't worth complaining about? 1 day ago:
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard…” friend, you literally live in an information silo. Do you speak Spanish? Because you probably aren’t hearing anything about Spain if you don’t. Do you follow any British media? Because they’re not coming to an American forum to bitch about Britain. You probably don’t care enough to even notice if someone was talking about another country, so how would you hear anything?
What’s uniquely American is making your internal drama everyone else’s problem.
- Comment on When if ever did "Throw Money at The Problem:" actually work? Instead of being about 75 percent useless? 5 days ago:
I ask myself the same question every time a company raises its prices.
- Comment on Are there any open source word processors that have AI integration? 6 days ago:
You killed a coral reef because you couldn’t figure out how to create headers and footers? No, there’s no AI integrated Open Source word processor.
- Comment on Do "rich" superheroes have to be rich in order for the story to work? 6 days ago:
Iron Man and Batman can only do what they do because they have the time and access to resources to do it. Guardian from Alpha Flight, for example would be something like “Working Class Ironman.” Common engineer who found out the mining suit he was building was going to be sold off to the military so he stole the prototype and became a superhero. He’s kind of an “Iron Man’s brain, Captain America’s heart” kind of character, so if you wanted the non-rich Iron Man, it exists, it’s just not Tony Stark. Tony needs to be rich or he’s not Tony Stark.
Same with Batman. The Shadow is a former soldier who uses stealth, martial arts and magic tricks to fight crime. But he’s not Bruce Wayne because being a billionaire playboy is what makes Batman possible.
Why recharacterize heroes with totally new backstories when the not-rich version is already a different superhero.
- Comment on Why do some racist, classist, homophobic ect people do "good" things sometimes? 1 week ago:
And now you’re completely characterizing my statements and lying to make yourself feel better. Good day.
- Comment on Why do some racist, classist, homophobic ect people do "good" things sometimes? 1 week ago:
I mean if your go to is to personally attack anyone who disagrees with you I don’t know why anyone would bother to have a serious discussion with you, but for the cheap seats I’ll try.
Yes, Criminal Psychopaths can, in certain circumstances be good people, other than the fact that they brutally kill some people. No mass murderer has ever been arrested that their neighbours weren’t standing there saying “but he was such a nice guy!” That doesn’t mean I don’t think they should be dealt with harshly, but the reality is, there are people who are good husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and friends who also do absolutely monstrous things when no one else is looking. While we’re at it, there’s no such thing as someone who has never harmed anyone. We’ve all done things that hurt people, and no, just apologizing doesn’t make it all go away. Some harms are more serious than others but no one is blameless. There are absolutely people who tend more toward good, and some that tend more toward bad, but I’ve also watched “good” people rationalize and try to justify some absolutely wild levels of cruelty under the wrong circumstances.
Look, I get it, you’ve been through some shit. I’ve been there and the idea that some people are good and some people are bad and as long as you find the good people you’ll be safe is really comforting. Unfortunately it’s not true. There’s no such thing as someone who is always cartoonishly evil, and there is no one who is perfectly safe, not even you.
- Comment on Why do some racist, classist, homophobic ect people do "good" things sometimes? 1 week ago:
There are no objectively good and bad people. Never have been, never will be. Every one of us is a grab bag of contradictions. Objectively good people are not rare, they’re fictional. If you seriously look under the surface, we’re all both monsters and angels on some level. Some of us just have better self-control and/or fewer opportunities to be actively transgressive.
- Comment on Why do some racist, classist, homophobic ect people do "good" things sometimes? 1 week ago:
As others have pointed out, there’s no “black-and-white” (if you’ll pardon the irony) way of categorizing people. Bad or good people are fictional. Even the best of us have ugly parts to how we behave, and otherwise terrible people can show surprising compassion. Our values can conflict and in the moment we chose to do something wildly out of character, or indulge in impulses we didn’t even realize we had.
In the real world there are no absolute heroes or villains. A man who gave his boots to a homeless man one moment, could beat another to death a few months later. Human beings are wildly inconsistent.
- Comment on What’s the difference between anarchy and libertarianism? 1 week ago:
In terms of actual theoretical frameworks? Libertarianism is highly individualistic, anarchism is highly collectivist. Extreme libertariansim can be described as “Every man for himself” and anarchism as open ended, reciprocal (as opposed to transactional) community.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 1 week ago:
So, most billionaires just sit on unrealized assets and take out loans against them that are untaxable. This way they avoid capital gains taxes from spending down their assets, as long as they never sell them, they never have to pay taxes and can sit on them until they die. Then it’s their kid’s problem. If you put a tax on those loans that exceeds capital gains tax, now they’re losing money by living off loans, and they’re actually better off selling some shares and stock options to pay for their Bugatti and super yacht.
The foreign investment profits tax means if they skip town and try collecting income from the companies they own from a beach in the Cayman islands, (or a brothel in Thailand) they are still paying tax on it before that money leaves the local market. That’s going to cool off the market for foreign investment but it’s also going to mean that even if they skip town, they can’t dodge the taxes on income from domestic businesses.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 1 week ago:
That’s going to take a lot of math and market analysis to work out the specifics of. I’m just one rando on the internet. This was more of a high level framework to start from. With a team of wonks and a bit of time you could pin down precise numbers.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 1 week ago:
The specifics are going to need refinement, yes. The broad principles should hold though. One tax that forces them to spend down accumulated wealth, one to punish trying to offshore profits to tax havens.
- Comment on Is the "Gen z stare" a real thing? 1 week ago:
As an elder millenial I might have some insight. You know how when we were kids people used to get all up in their feelings when you weren’t smiling. That’s this. “Gen Z stare”, is just “Resting Bitch Face” or “You look prettier when you smile darlin’” repackaged and rebranded. They’re mad that the young people in general and women in particular aren’t running around with goofy forced smiles on their faces to make them feel special.
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 1 week ago:
Two prongs. One, tax loans against stock options and publicly traded shares. Two tax foreign investment dividends that constitute more than 10% of the total value of a publicly traded company. Step one makes them live of dividends and realized assets. They can’t live off other loans of other people’s money and just keep hording assets, two pins them down and keeps them from trying to take their money and run to a tax haven.
They will eventually find a way around those, and you will have to adjust the tax code to accomodate, but that’s going to be true regardless. It’s a bit like digital hygene and cyber security. An endless arms race between states trying to build more effective risk management tools and people trying to exploit and the system and thus the people living within the system.
- Comment on Has anyone tried making a free software, federated, advertising system? 1 week ago:
Advertising itself is deeply offensive and morally contemptible. Every ad I see for a company lowers my opinion of them, so no, I don’t think it’s a good idea or worth putting effort in to.
- Comment on How come most celebs/influencers go broke with in a short amount of time earning a couple million? Why not invest in local stores or offer money for a percentage of said store why not perpetualy money 1 week ago:
Listen friend, I don’t know how much brain damage you’ve suffered, but if you hadn’t noticed I’m using complete sentences and proper punctuation, so I’m quite likely older than you are. You should probably try to cut back on the substance abuse. Anyway, people don’t tend to invest locally. That’s not how investment usually works unless you spent decades learning how to invest, instead of learning how to be a celeb/influencer. The smart ones stick their money in index funds, the ones that think they’re smart stick their money in crypto, and most spend themselves into the poorhouse, with more debt than they started with before they made millions. If you are looking for seed capital to open a laundromat or something you’ll want to find a bank or investment firm to pitch your business idea to, not the kid on the corner who makes more money taking pictures of his lunch than you’ve made in your whole life. I’d recommend some remedial English lessons before the pitch meeting though. Maybe Pedro down the street, he seems to be more comfortable with English than you do.
- Comment on How come most celebs/influencers go broke with in a short amount of time earning a couple million? Why not invest in local stores or offer money for a percentage of said store why not perpetualy money 1 week ago:
It’s broken English with poor grammar. “Why not perpetually money” doesn’t even constitute a complete thought, let alone a complete sentence. Most ESL people I know with more than a few months of practice can express themselves in English better than that.
- Comment on Why do some people (i.e. white conservatives) think all Spanish speakers (especially native Spanish speakers) are Mexican? 1 week ago:
Significant portions of the demographic you identified don’t realize New Mexico is in the US, and couldn’t find Canada on a map, and you’re expecting them to realize there’s more countries than just Mexico to the south?
- Comment on In the context of celebrities announcing a new thing they're releasing, what does "soft launch" vs "hard launch" mean exactly? 🤔 1 week ago:
Think of it in terms of video games. Soft-launch is like an Early Access game. It’s very explicitly not feature complete, lacks the refinement of a finished product, and exists as a kind of crowdsourced quality assurance tool to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and gauge the opinion of people who aren’t professional developers who may have biases and blind spots as someone who understands the product at a deep level. A soft launch usually has minimal if any marketing done, and explicitly targets people with special interest in the product, while the hard launch is the polished final product and gets a much wider marketing push.
- Comment on If someone opened a store and just sold stuff at cost, which undercuts every other competitors by alot. Would this not for the big corps to come way down on their prices? 2 weeks ago:
Also, unless you’re selling literally everything, they can pad their margins on what you don’t provide, and pound you into the ground with loss-leaders, ON TOP of volume discounts. That’s how Walmart destroyed local businesses, by taking “acceptable losses” selling below cost for a while until it broke the competition.
- Comment on Has the scientific community ever reconciled with the fact global warming is going to happen and there is no stopping it? 2 weeks ago:
I mean technically the science of it has been settled for over 100 years. That’s why Alexander Graham Bell sunk his fortune into early solar energy. That we are going over the cliff into warming the likes of which haven’t been seen in 250 million years is what has been settled for at least 20.
- Comment on Has the scientific community ever reconciled with the fact global warming is going to happen and there is no stopping it? 2 weeks ago:
It’s been settled for 20 years that the world is warming. The efforts at this point are entirely focused on containing and limiting the damage. The fight to stop it is long over, and there’s absolutely nothing that can stop some level of catastrophic damage.
- Comment on what do you think is the future of the internet and tech in general? 2 weeks ago:
For general consumers? Probably complete industry collapse and regression. Specialized industries and national security use will continue to develop, but broad market access is going to likely stagnate for a decade at least if not more.
- Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US? 3 weeks ago:
Knowing what you’re talking about is considered elitist by most Americans. Under-funding education is effectively a DEI program for idiots.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Political influence accretes where treasure is. Same as always. Right now a bunch of old rich men are trying to buy their way into heaven with a sacrifice of human blood, that’s all.
- Comment on What's the point of specifically Americans identifying with other cultures if people born there will just make fun of them for it? 4 weeks ago:
Look, I’m of Scottish descent, but I’m not Scottish. It’s been generations since anyone in my family has seen scotch heather in anything but a photograph. I never went to a Scottish school, sat in a Scottish pew, and while I can understand the Scots dialect I couldn’t speak it to save my life. I have a few fragments of old traditions, some of which no one in Scotland even practices anymore. Sure, I like a nice dram of whisky or black pudding as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy sushi, that doesn’t make me Japanese either. So why would it make any sense to refer to myself as a Scottish-American? If I were a recent import or maybe 2nd generation, sure it makes some sense, but I don’t have the foggiest clue what life in Scotland is like. If you dropped me in Glasgow or Aberdeen without GPS in my pocket and asked me to find my way around I wouldn’t know where to start. So what gives me the right to call myself Scottish anything? Because my family held on to a few comforting traditions from a Scotland that’s been gone for more than a century?
There’s a very old trope that the land seeps into your blood over time and no matter how far you roam from it, it calls you back, and shapes your character. It’s from the same school of thought that coined the phrase “Blood and Soil” and murdered people in gas chambers. It’s not a philosophy I have much attachment to, in spite of the fact I have one of those in my bloodline too.
- Comment on What's the point of specifically Americans identifying with other cultures if people born there will just make fun of them for it? 4 weeks ago:
Actually most other places have far more indigenous culture, because the dominant socio-economic group is the indigenous people of that place. The existence of an indigenous minority is pretty unique.
- Comment on What should've been the point or points for society to throw up their hands and stop supporting the government? 5 weeks ago:
Citizens United. That ruling should have started a riot that didn’t end until the constitution was amended.
- Comment on Is creatine safe? 5 weeks ago:
I know a few people who kind of went crazy with the creatine and definitely took it too far and hurt themselves with it, which is crazy because I’m not even into fitness stuff so you wouldn’t expect a filthy casual like me to see that. From what I understand figuring out the right dose is tricky because there’s a lot of different body types and metabolisms, and the label always overestimates how much you really can process. It’s a supplement meaning it’s basically unregulated so they can put whatever they want on there. I’d say it’s common enough that people overdoing it is common enough to be concerning.
Can it mess with your kidneys? Absolutely. Will it? Bruh, this is the internet, we have no way to know that, but if you’re going easy on it, then probably not. Just make sure you’re using your head and it should be fine.