searabbit

@searabbit@piefed.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do I belong in tech anymore? - On quitting, the spread of AI, and the loss of an ideal.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I know I’m in the minority here, but I don’t blame AI for the conditions he’s describing at all. I’m a little jealous that as an older millennial, he got to experience the golden years of tech work where everyone was getting rich off work marketed as meaningful and socially progressive. Us younger folks that got into tech because of that era are kicking ourselves for not being born a decade or two earlier.

  As a gen z-er, I’ve only experienced exploitation. Skeleton crews where you are saddled with way too much work at all times, and your seniors have no time to train you to do it properly, so you bury yourself in a cycle of burn out and tech debt. Oh, and our starting wages have likely not increased since OP graduated college. So my perspective is that work for large corporations is a joke, and no one actually cares about the output beyond how much money they can extract out of shittier (i.e., cheaper) work. This enshittification of the workplace is why people are using AI first and asking questions never. I don’t blame them. I’m using copilot for side projects and it’s 10x faster at coding than I am, although I agree with OP, the code can be sloppy and should absolutely require human supervision.

  I think what he hasn’t quite arrived at as the logical conclusion of his laments is that tech workers need to unionize. It sucks because I do think people of his generation who benefited most from the tech boom would never consider that they would benefit from class consciousness (a lot of them aren’t just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, they are actually ashamed millionaires). But yeah, if he wants privacy protections in the workplace to be taken seriously, if he wants assurance that AI will not literally take his job because it was trained to do just that by his company, if he wants to find meaning in human connection, he’s looking for a union.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alternative Headline⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Same energy as the people who handed out bricks to pedestrians to wave threateningly at cars so they wouldn’t get any funny ideas at the intersection.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My friend is 31 and is constantly breaking out in acne. She also gets very irritated/argumentative before her period. Is this normal for her age?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel for your friend because my mom had acne until (I assume) she hit menopause, and my acne starts back up if I ever take a break from continuous birth control. Doctors are also incredibly dismissive about these things because no one understands female hormones -yay for us!!

  I can’t diagnose your friend, but I can point you in some directions to bring up at the doctor:

  Starting about 2 years ago her face started getting acne, and any treatments just made it worse. the only thing that helped was antibiotics.

  What treatments? (you don’t have to tell me, but have it ready for the doctor) Usually they’ll hand you some benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid along with the antibiotics as the initial treatment. Maybe tretinoin (retin-A). These are very harsh actives, so they can be very irritating if you use too much or don’t combine them with a skincare routine. They also just don’t work for everyone. She can go back to the dermatologist and try something else.

  Some of the spots are very tiny, like pore-sized, and get white heads

  This sounds like it could be fungal acne (again not qualified to diagnose, go to a doctor). If it’s itchy and also gets worse with heat/sweat, try some anti-dandruff shampoo with ketoconazole or zinc pyrithione and see if that helps.

  Before her period she gets very irritated-hyper, one time she got so pissed off at a pretty mundane thing she threw a mug at the wall.

  She should speak to her doctor about PCOS and/or PMDD. They will likely recommend birth control for these conditions if she has them, but that is not the only option if she doesn’t want to go on it.

  she says she only looks young because she has big eyes and a small nose

  “Looking young,” “big eyes,” and “small nose” could be indicators of various genetic or endocrine conditions, but I wouldn’t bring this up to the doctor since it’s super vague and doesn’t point to anything in particular. She should just stick to symptoms that are bothering her. Presumably the doctor will be able to spot the connection if there is one.

  Since 31 is still very young, is this normal for her age?

  I don’t think this is a useful question. Acne is a common condition even in adults, but it is still a condition that most people want treated. The point is she wants treatment. If a doctor dismisses her with a “oh it’s normal” or a “it’s just a sign that you have young skin!” (my mom got this line into her 40s…), go to a different doctor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do wealthy people know if the people they meet are wealthy or not?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  People generally hang out with other people of their general socioeconomic class, so it doesn’t take much guesswork. Usually, they just have nothing in common with poorer people (not the literal poors, upper middle class is poor to them), don’t go to the same places that poorer people go to, and unfortunately, poorer people generally tend to be less attractive than rich people due to lack of access to cosmetic care. The cosmetic care includes skincare, dental work, and I’ve even seen growth hormones as soon as elementary school.

  One last point, multimillionaire and billionaire circles are extremely small because, as you can imagine, there’s not that many of them! They tend to know way too much about each other, so if you do happen to be poorer and run in their circles, they’ll either know and/or you’re smart enough to be playing their game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is pet care a privilage that only "rich countries" have? Do you think people from poorer countries should be judged for not taking their pets to a vet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think people who grow up middle class in a first world country are so sheltered from suffering that animal cruelty is the first example of it that they can actually empathize with and understand as a black and white issue (to them). Unfortunately, suffering is just a fact of life for everyone but the most privileged. The logical conclusion to “if you can’t give animals the standard of care that I expect as a global top 1%er of wealth, then you shouldn’t own any pets” is a PETA type policy of killing any pet that is living a suboptimal existence. Which, if they were humans, we would consider that genocide. It’s really just not a reasonable stance at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I did it slowly over time. Every time reddit made a site wide change that worsened the user experience (which has been a lot since I joined a decade ago), I’d take one step to distance myself. First it was unsubscribing from major subreddits and engaging less, then staying logged out, then deleting the app but browsing on the web, and finally reddit pissed me off enough to try an alternative. So far I’ve already spent much less time doomscrolling online since this place isn’t filled with rage-baiting bot content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨14,000 routers are infected by malware that's highly resistant to takedowns⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe the interests we serve are the friends we made serving another’s interests along the way…to serve interests? Or something like that

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fascism bad.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no point in being scared and stressed for the sake of it. If you’re not channeling those emotions into real action, you’re really just better off chilling tf out until there is some real and immediate threat to stress about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨spoopy figs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you have ever tasted the defensive secretions ladybugs make when they feel threatened, you know what these worms taste like.

  You say that like it’s a normal thing to have tasted. Please don’t tell me I’ve also been unknowingly eating ladybug secretions this whole time😭