scarabic
@scarabic@lemmy.world
- Comment on And no paper towels to use on the handle 1 day ago:
The best is no door at all - like at airports where there’s just a barrier wall you have to walk around. I was about to say it’s not something you can do in every setting, but that’s only because we aren’t willing to dedicate the space to it.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 day ago:
Thank you for complexifying the stereotype of the mustache-twirling CEO, which most people can’t see beyond. There certainly are more people to blame than just CEOs - people with more power. The entire concept of a fiduciary seems like the seed of evil to me. Once you have a CEO beholden to pursue the interests of shareholders to the exclusion of all others, the incentives are in place for people to get hurt. The shareholders don’t really have to call a single shot (and they usually don’t). The financiers / shareholders are still guilty of participating in this system at all, of course, but surely the CEO is at least as guilty since he’s usually also a shareholder and will be the fiduciary in question to actually carry out the hurting. So I think it’s fair to hate the CEOs, actually, as much as anyone.
But I would agree that the politicians and lobbyists have to be on this list, probably at the top of it. They are the only ones who can do anything about this entire system, which, as soon as it exists, is a recipe for hurting people. The people who drive the regulatory capture that allows our system to become so shitty are surely going straight to hell.
What of the rest of us though, who don’t even run for office and give them a challenge?
- Comment on When if ever did "Throw Money at The Problem:" actually work? Instead of being about 75 percent useless? 1 day ago:
You can impose that technicality if you want, but when corruption is perhaps the world’s top obstacle to funding solutions for things, I see little point except the joy of splitting hairs.
- Comment on When if ever did "Throw Money at The Problem:" actually work? Instead of being about 75 percent useless? 1 day ago:
Corruption is probably the biggest thing that keeps it from working. Developed countries don’t have the slightest idea what corruption even is. We hear that word in the US and we think “oh dear, bribes!” But in many parts of the world the entire economy is basically spent on greasing every palm, high and low, to keep some regime in power. Whole generations of entire countries have basically gone up in smoke this way. It makes the army’s $400 hammer sound like an absolute bargain.
- Comment on After opening a jar of pizza sauce, how long would you trust it was still good in the fridge? 5 days ago:
They go bad pretty fast. Mold spots within a week in my experience. I always try to use it all.
- Comment on "It's gone baby... it's all gone"| Sigh .....‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch: Their “Shows Are Sh**” 5 days ago:
He likes Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Enterprise. When he says “the rest can go,” he’s talking about… Picard, Discovery and Starfleet Academy?
Unless you believe he watched Prodigy, which I do not, it sounds like he likes about half of New Trek
- Comment on The unAbomber. Otherwise, I agree. 5 days ago:
That was a swear, not a prayer.
- Comment on The unAbomber. Otherwise, I agree. 5 days ago:
Christ go rub one out and touch some grass. I hope you feel better soon.
- Comment on Is cryptocurrency good for anything? 5 days ago:
That’s all true. There are also risks with other forms of currency too though. Cash is entirely vulnerable to theft (and destruction, and you can even lose it eg: forgetting where you hid it, just like forgetting a password). And other accounts can be hacked and stolen from as well, not always in any traceable way, else there would be no bank fraud or credit card theft. Nothing’s perfect.
- Comment on Is cryptocurrency good for anything? 6 days ago:
It’s a technology that allows you to verifiably possess a definite quantity of “a thing.” That thing is just virtual.
Think of it this way: shares in companies are also virtual things. You can’t build a bridge out of em.
But a stock exchange is there to sell them to you and they will keep track that yes, you do actually own X shares of company Y.
Instead of issuing shares on a stock exchange to raise money, a new company could just sell shares of itself by creating a new crypto. There would be a finite number of those shares. They could control whether more can be created. And it would be verifiable who owns what.
So that verifying and quantity-control are both features of the software itself. You could say it’s good for those things. As I illustrated above, this could be used to virtualize ownership of something, including the buying and selling of shares of it.
- Comment on Is cryptocurrency good for anything? 6 days ago:
Just one point to add: there is no currency that is universally accepted. You probably cant buy a pizza with Kuwaiti dinar right now either. But that’s definitely a currency. So your part about “everyone agrees” is not really true of any currency. They work only for a subset of humanity who mutually agree it has value. And you can absolutely find people who will buy crypto from you using other currencies, or give you goods and services for it. Those people are rather randomly distributed around the world though instead of being grouped inside one geographic border. That’s the only difference.
- Comment on Is the "Gen z stare" a real thing? 6 days ago:
Exactly. You are not in your element so even things that seem obvious might not be. It’s very easy to be wrong. And if you do the wrong thing, people will get made at you because “you could have just asked.” Do they really want customers in there all acting on their best guesses? I think that is a fool’s wish. I also don’t get the expectation that I will prioritize sparing the staff a small effort like speaking some info. I’m not taking a shit on the floor and making them clean it up. I’m asking a question. They’re literally paid to help. This is the job. It’s work. This is why they call it working.
- Comment on Is the "Gen z stare" a real thing? 6 days ago:
Again. You think someone should be able to figure it out with the tiniest effort. But it really may not be so obvious to someone who doesn’t know what you know.
You are not alone here - all people struggle to truly visualize the mind of another person who doesn’t know what they themselves know. Sure you know whatever it is 1000 times over. But the customer does not, and they may have a totally different 1000 things in their mind.
People don’t want to take a guess when they can just ask. If you are in an area where customers can address you, you are there to help them. Why should they stop and guess to spare you effort? It is unreasonable to get pissed off by this.
- Comment on Is the "Gen z stare" a real thing? 6 days ago:
You know… it’s a courtesy. I do mean it - for what it is. Thanks for handing me my change. I’m not going to fire up my acting chops to “sell it” like they did something extraordinary if they did not.
- Comment on Is the "Gen z stare" a real thing? 6 days ago:
Yes. They work in the store and know all the things. Others do not. It’s literally not their job to know. It may seem dumb when someone doesn’t know something you have learned 100x over. You may even convince yourself that any normal person should figure some thing out easily. But everyone isn’t working in that store thinking about this stuff for 8 hours at a time and we are all busy living our lives. I don’t believe in being a dick to someone because you think their question is dumb. Frankly we are all smart at some things and dumb at others and the rule should be to have some grace with one another about it.
The water cups may indeed be right there dude but excuse the fuck out of me for not spotting them - I just walked into this restaurant and there are a million things to look at in here.
- Comment on Is the "Gen z stare" a real thing? 6 days ago:
GenX here. I think it’s the name that’s given to a small collection of social mismatches between the generations’ explanations of one another and their social behaviors. Gen Z in my view do not place much value on social graces as I define them. I define them as things like “greet someone before you ask for something,” and “say thank you before you leave.” I try to do these things at all times and I find GenZ do not always return them or give any sign they even saw them. When a cashier hands me my change and it’s time for me to go, I will say “thank you,” and imho it’s good social graces for them to say “thank you” as well or “you’re welcome” or even just “have a nice day.” But with GenZ cashiers, I say thank you, and then realize they had stopped paying any attention to my presence even before I said it. The second the change has been handed to me, it seems they consider the transaction over, period.
This is not always or even most of the time. But it’s something that happens often enough to notice as a pattern. Once you’ve heard the stereotype of the “GenZ stare” you can start to experience confirmation bias of it. And really you never know if the person you’re facing is GenZ or not.
So it’s not a thing one should over-think. But yes I think there is something real behind it. Like a lot of stereotypes, it’s not fair to apply to everyone, but it may have some origin in reality somehow.
- Comment on Do boys who had affectionate mothers growing up become more "gentle"? 6 days ago:
As it happens, I am married to someone raised in a Chinese family so I hear you and am familiar with a lot of the dynamic. We just all about it very openly as an unhealthy and even abusive way to grow up.
I remember I got promoted at work and one of the VPs above me sent me an email saying “we’re proud of you.” He happened to be Asian. And my wife was floored that he actually said this.
- Comment on Do boys who had affectionate mothers growing up become more "gentle"? 1 week ago:
There is no right answer to great big stereotypes like this. Sure, raising someone with love and tenderness can keep them from growing up into a big violent asshole. I call that a good outcome. But in previous generations, this was somehow made into a bad thing. “The women made him soft!” That’s hardcore patriarchal bullshit and an excellent example of men oppressing men.
It sounds like you may be deep in the pocket of that oppression, if you think that “stoic as hell except for occasionally getting mad” is neutral. That is not neutral dude. That sucks. I’m sorry you dad never showed you love and kindness, to the point where you question your mother for doing so. Wake up from this for your own sake.
- Comment on How do you fight abandonment issues when people keep abandoning you 1 week ago:
Could you be confusing the facts with your feelings? You thought the relationship issues were fixable but the partner did not. Were they just saying that as an excuse to abandon you? You could look at this differently. Everyone gets to decide if a relationship is where they want to invest their life. If you honor their right to do this, you could stop looking at it as if the entire enterprise was a great big abandonment of you. That really does sound like your take on it. We’ve all had relationships end. I’ve been on both ends of it. I didn’t see it through the lens of abandonment because I don’t have that upbringing.
But you seem to insist that the facts align with your feelings, therefore your feelings are pretty legitimate and so you don’t know what to do. It really sounds like your feelings are 100% in charge of you here. They don’t have to be.
- Comment on Why do some people (i.e. white conservatives) think all Spanish speakers (especially native Spanish speakers) are Mexican? 1 week ago:
First of all they do it because they are stereotyping, which is lazy and dumb (and these people are lazy and dumb).
But why do they stereotype everyone to Mexico and not somewhere else? Easy. It’s the US’s largest Spanish speaking neighbor. It’s actually the largest Spanish speaking country anywhere, #10 by population in the world, with 150 million people. So if you had to guess, Mexico would generally be a higher probability guess.
- Comment on What's the deal with people liking old devices? 1 week ago:
Thank you for the reminder.
- Comment on What's the deal with people liking old devices? 1 week ago:
Older tech did stuff for us. Newer tech does stuff to us. If you think everything newer is better, I can understand that, but it probably means you are young and don’t know what tech used to be like. One small way people try to recapture those times is by opting out of all the latest apps and fuckery and using something simpler and retro.
I have no idea why you want to make this about gender identity. Those parts of your question seem to challenge the name of the sub.
- Comment on Is there still anyway to bypass Youtube "Sign in to confirm your age" bullshit in 2026? 1 week ago:
The precise situation is that US states don’t have age verification laws right now but Texas tried to implement on on Jan 1 (it got blocked by a judge as u co stititional) and Louisiana and Utah have laws coming into effect soon.
So it’s both true that there are no laws but platforms are moving because of laws. The laws have been announced for many months. They aren’t trivial to implement so of course they are doing advance work. They might even want to test it and see how badly it hurts them.
No company wants to do age verification IMO. There is no upside for them. Maybe if we actually prosecuted tech companies for harming children, there would be, but lolz.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Okay, that was condescending. Elitist just didn’t seem like the right word to me.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Won’t your donation be even more meaningful if it turns out they don’t have much now?
Why do you need to know that they already have a good library before you’ll help improve their library?
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
I don’t think it’s elitist to say that you should read books before you build a library. That’s just good advice. And it’s fair to wonder if someone who cannot string a sentence together reads many books.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Oh my god it’s the same person who made me think I was having a stroke with the Rodney Dangerfield post. For fucks sake, I think we’ve found a use for AI at last.
OP, allow me to help:
“Rewrite this as if your brain is not melting like a crayon that’s been farted on a thousand times a second” (and then paste in what you want to post).
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
The professor seems to understand the difference between the full complexity of the real world and a limited educational exercise with a manageable scope. Mr. Melon does not understand this and seems to only be able to engage with the real world at full complexity. The professor is completely open about the fact that he’s running an artificial scenario with a limited focus. Mr. Melon just lobs confounds at it repeatedly. I will have to say that the professor is in the right here.
But because the professor has a british accent, glasses, and a bow tie, he’s coded as an elitist prick. And Mr. Lemon’s vernacular, colorful clothing, and casual style is supposed to contrast with this in a classic “book smart” versus “street smart” trope. In fact the entire movie is built on this premise: real world wealth and popular appeal help Mr. Lemon triumph over age, social hierarchy, institutional rules and many other obstacles to achieve social success and the attention of eligible young women. Therefore, in the language of the film, Mr. Lemon is most obviously “right.”
- 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? 1 week ago:
I think you are asking, essentially, why there are no retail non-profits. Operate them like a charity for the common good, etc, but all you do is sell stuff. No fancy human rights work or animal rescue. Just sell stuff. Cheap. As a non-profit.
Here’s the best possible answer to this: good idea - go do it.
I think what you will find is that you can’t get any kind of investment to help you, not even a small business loan. So it’ll be hard for you to compete at all. And in the beginning you’ll be so small that you probably won’t be able to sell for less than the big stores. They buy at special lower prices because they are so big. You don’t get that. And even if you frame the whole thing as a charitable enterprise to help the poor, who will your donors be? Why would anyone give their money to this cause over something that helps the most vulnerable directly?
- Comment on Is school cafeteria food in America trash? 1 week ago:
Locales differ but in my experience:
- no one is required to eat the cafeteria food
- the cafeteria food has a cost
- the cafeteria food quality was low when I was young but not terrible, and is much improved now
- many kids absolutely do bring their own lunch. My kids look at the monthly menu and decide if they want to bring something from home or eat what’s being offered at the cafeteria
To be honest I find your question confusing. It seems to start with the question of whether everyone has the option to buy items or eats at the cafeteria, but then jumps suddenly into “is the food that bad.” I don’t honestly understand quite what it is you want to know.