scarabic
@scarabic@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why do some people hate drinking water? 3 days ago:
Water just wasn’t really an option
This is funny, considering how many people in the world survive on muddy water they had to walk miles to collect in a bucket.
- Comment on Why do some people hate drinking water? 3 days ago:
Yes chlorine is a very volatile chemical and dissipates quickly.
- Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues? 1 week ago:
Yes I think “having to work” is definitely the boundary of upper class. We’re talking inheritances, investments, landlording, whatever.
I earn a great deal of money at my job - top 1%. But I live in a HCOL area and am raising two kids. We have no aspirations but to own our house someday and send our kids to college. If we go on a vacation once a year we are happy. I would lose absolutely everything were I to get laid off from my job. We still look for sales at Costco and cook at home instead of eating out, like everyone else. This still feels like “middle class” to me, whatever my wage is.
However I am seeing that even the basic components of the American Dream, a house and a family, are more than most can attain. I think that says that our working class is growing and perhaps getting pretty large. Certainly if you are living hand to mouth that’s working class. If you have no prospect of owning your home or sending your kids to college, that’s working class.
“Working class” has associations from when we were an industrial and manufacturing economy. People who work in an office don’t think “I’m working class” because they don’t wear coveralls and operate power tools. But we’ve transitioned to a services-based economy now for many years, so I think a LOT of people are working class without even realizing it.
And if you don’t even know you’re working class, how are you going to get fired up about a workers rights rally?
- Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues? 1 week ago:
I’ll add one extra thing here: that no one in America identifies themselves as “a worker” or “working class.”
Perhaps Europe, with its historic class strata, is better prepared for this. Maybe people there know that they are working class and always will be. With that identity firmly held, they can find each other and agitate for their rights.
In America, if you are working class, first of all you’d never admit it. Everyone is “middle class,” here, don’t you know. And even if in your heart you know you are working class, your aim is to get out of the working class, not make its life better.
No justifications here, just a description of American psychology on this topic.
- Comment on All this produce is going to spoil at the food bank where I volunteer 1 week ago:
I wonder if your good bank can set up some kind of relationship with farms in your region. Those farms may be open to taking lots of spoiled produce as animal feed and compost material. In exchange they might share their crops with you.
- Comment on All this produce is going to spoil at the food bank where I volunteer 1 week ago:
My workplace used to donate all its leftover food to a local meal service charity, daily. But they refused to take fresh fruits and vegetables because they just spoil too fast. It was sad because those are the foods people need the most but they are logistically very difficult to deliver, as you are witnessing.
- Comment on Should I apologize to this person? 1 week ago:
Or just, you know, move on with your life.
- Comment on Should I apologize to this person? 1 week ago:
To answer the question of what Matthew Broderick should do, I would need to have some information about what the victims/family want. Do they want an apology and public statement? They should get one. Do they want to be left alone? They should be.
The thing is YOU DO already have this information. They want to be left alone. You want to violate that and contact them to apologize for… contacting them before?
This isn’t hard dude. You aren’t Matthew Broderick. You didn’t kill anyone. You have an unhealthy fascination with this person from the very beginning of your story and you are working VERY hard to convince yourself that exercising it is in fact a moral imperative for you.
It is not. The only thing you can do for these people is leave them alone and digest your own feelings about it. Get therapeutic help, please.
- Comment on Should I apologize to this person? 1 week ago:
Just ask yourself one question. Are you doing this to soothe your own feelings? It sure sounds like that. So just out away the “I want to do the right thing” bit and recognize that sometimes the right thing to do is nothing.
- Comment on I guess they hate shoppers (context below) 1 week ago:
I don’t say this as a justification but they have probably placed them further out so the plants can get light. Back up against the building, under that overhang, they would not get the light they need, and after a few days this inventory would spoil and be lost, which is probably bad news for someone’s job.
Again, not a justification. I just don’t think the placement is completely at random.
- Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues? 1 week ago:
“Why isn’t someone doing it for me already? You all suck.”
—OP
- Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues? 1 week ago:
Hey go be pro-labor without trivializing gay rights. There is absolutely no call for that bullshit.
- Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better? 1 week ago:
Zero plastic doesn’t need to be a goal. There has rarely if ever been a more versatile and useful material. Delivering food and medicine to humanity would be impossible if we all woke up tomorrow without plastic.
So it’s more a case of judicious use:
- use when no feasible alternative exists (not just because plastic is most convenient)
- invest in effective recycling and recovery programs, including total incineration - AND (important) make sure the cost of this is shifted upstream to the manufacturers of plastics
There will be many cases where “no feasible alternative exist” and that will mean “it is prohibitively costly to do it with glass and steel.” I think that is really your questions. The answer is yes, sometimes plastic is actually best.
But I’d feel much more comfortable deciding that for a given use case IF #2 actually existed. Under current conditions, there may be no reasonable use of plastic at all.
- Comment on Why do I drag my feet when it's time to start a new task even if I know I'll enjoy it once I get started? 1 week ago:
Depression isn’t “feeling sad.” It has a lot of symptoms people do t commonly associate with it, including irritability and lack of motivation.
- Comment on Why is having a lawyer present during police interviews "opt in" rather than "opt out"? 1 week ago:
You’re asking why the state doesn’t exercise your rights for you instead of waiting for you to exercise them.
On the one hand, I see your point. Just make it all part of the process. On the other hand, I have in illusions that rights and representation are going to be brought to me on a silver platter and defended by someone else on my behalf.
They very least that any citizen must be prepared to do is invoke the rights they have. It would be great if we didn’t have to. But a lot of things would be great.
- Comment on Is this "artist" on spotify AI generated? 2 weeks ago:
I can’t believe they pay musicians shit but they paid Joe Rogan $100M. What the hell kind of priorities are those.
- Comment on this is why nothing feels right 2 weeks ago:
Whether or not your circumstances are to blame, there’s still the very large matter of how you cope with them, and therapist should be able to assist with this no matter what.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
I’m like you. Not everyone is though. Or they might think they are, and the second they perceive any kind of sleight from the person they’ve showered with free gifts to enjoy, the resentment comes out: “after all I’ve done for you, how dare you [whatever].”
To be fair, this can come as a surprise to the gift giver too. People often legit aren’t aware that their heart is building up expectations as they do “nice things just to be nice.”
- Comment on My mom tells me I should cut dad off for cheating on her, am I a bad person for not wanting to do so? 2 weeks ago:
Your choice, as you’ve presented them, are so extreme. Cut your dad off forever and move out, or… do nothing?
Let’s set your mom’s demands aside for a second. Do you have any reaction to him cheating on his wife? How do you feel about that?
You should act based on how you feel about it. And if your mom is incredibly wounded by it, that can absolutely be a factor in how you feel.
I’d think that cheating on your mom should have SOME effect on you. You say your relationship with him hasn’t changed. Is that true? Or is it only true in comparison to your mom’s extreme demands?
Basically, stop playing this like it’s all black or all white and realize that you have a million ways to react to this situation in the middle somewhere.
You’re not a bad person for not moving out immediately. You actually might be a bad person if you have absolutely no problem with the cheating. But you can disapprove of the cheating and still have a good relationship with your dad.
You can disapprove of the cheating and still have a good relationship with your dad. That seemed worth saying twice.
- Comment on WTF is a rural town in the USA? 3 weeks ago:
We use the word differently. In the past I think we used it more as you do, because “going to town” had the connotations of going to a big city.
“Town” in American usage can mean anything from a small urban center (like under 10k people) to an incorporated municipality that has only a post office and tons of farms around it.
Basically we don’t say “village” here. So town is the smallest word we have. But it has a big range.
- Comment on Do you think a story that mixes magic with super advanced technology can work? 3 weeks ago:
Stargate SG-1 is a great example where no matter what the magic is, it’s eventually revealed to be technology underneath - just really advanced technology. If you take all limits off science, it’s easy for the two to begin blending. They even do the “only available to some people” thing as technology: certain people share a gene with the ancient ancestors who made the high-technology, and so it recognizes and activates for them and not others.
- Comment on Do you think a story that mixes magic with super advanced technology can work? 3 weeks ago:
I think you inevitably face the whole “magic IS advanced technology” thing. If you actually want them to be different things, you have to have some answer to this.
- Comment on Why is it okay for shit to go down the drain but not food? 3 weeks ago:
Just don’t read about gutter oil afterward or you might immediately have some solids to throw at your plumbing.
- Comment on what language would be best for me to learn? 3 weeks ago:
I learned French and it hasn’t done much for me. Occasional use in the Middle East but I’ve spent considerable time in multiple countries there and it’s still only occasionally useful. I love the language and have no regrets. But I’d get 1000x the use out of Spanish, here in the US.
- Comment on what language would be best for me to learn? 3 weeks ago:
China’s economic growth was on such a steep climb for enough years that we all basically thought we’d need to know Mandarin to get by in the future. Remember in Firefly how they all cursed in Mandarin because it was basically the primary language of humanity. I know white people in California that send their kids to Mandarin language school.
But this impression has peaked. In the 80s we thought we’d all be speaking Japanese soon. And the Chinese growth miracle is over. With demographic collapse staring them in the face, I’m no longer seeing them featuring so prominently in 20 years. India has surpassed their population and are taking a lot of their business - and they speak English
Though I suppose as languages go, Mandarin is as good as any other and better than many. What are you going to do with Italian, honestly?
- Comment on What's the process of black market weed consumption? 3 weeks ago:
My friend, life is ticking by. Get out there or you’ll miss it. Good luck.
- Comment on What's the process of black market weed consumption? 3 weeks ago:
I think there’s a lot in this post about how times have changed. Notice the part about not being able to get time away from parents. Or not being able to get outside somewhere to smoke up. Kids these days don’t go out like we used to. Shit my brother and I used to haul our asses a couple of miles over some hills that had rattlesnakes to reach a video arcade. Our mom just made us carry a snakebite kit. OP now sits at home pecking at their phone asking how to go outside and gosh is it just impossible in suburbia? I am floored by this post.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Thank you and the person above you for having adult attitudes. I can’t believe the teenagers in here shrieking “you don’t know what’s in my heart from one word I said!”
People need to learn the meaning of the words they use. Mistakes can happen, but they should not be amended not defended.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
The context was provided here and the comment was, frankly, uncivilized. Race isn’t directly involved but there’s a deep legacy of racist attitudes expressed in terms like “uncivilized savages” that this comment unfortunately treads near. Obi Wan Kenobi taking about blasters being uncivilized does not.
So I agree context matters, but I don’t care that they were thinking - It’s a badly chosen word for this situation. Does it make the person a racist? Not on its own. But it does make me wonder what kind of person makes this sort of slip in 2025.
Someone can say the word “negro” in a respectful tone with all the best intentions but yeah, they should still just plain find another way to say it.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
It’s been one of the UN’s primary missions since its inception to unwind the horrific legacy of European colonialism, and help every former colony complete the transition to statehood. When I visited the UN and took the tour some 20 years ago, they were almost ready to call this mission done, but still had about 5 spots they were working on. It’s worth learning more about. Regardless, the course of history has been changed forever by colonialism and Europe continues to enjoy benefits built on its spoils while developing countries still struggle from their wounds. The world will in all practical terms never be free from the stain of colonialism.