Brainsploosh

@Brainsploosh@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve already covered this earlier in the thread

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Profit, price pressures, inflation are not necessarily meaningful terms in a different system.

  What exactly do you mean by that?

  In a circular or planned economy, those aren’t really significant measures, neither in a subsistence living context. Which are strategies that have housed all of humanity until the last few hundred years.

  In a post-capitalist economy, we might be able to provide the human necessities without exploitation. I don’t know how, but I know it’s not through more capitalism.

  Homes have been built for many thousands of years longer than we’ve had those as concepts.

  If you include cedar bark as a major construction material then sure. Not knocking cedar bark here - it’s great. But not quite the same investment in time or durability.

  As mentioned in the last reply, the Palace of Knossos, as well as the Petra were marvels of craftsmanship and engineering, staggering investments, and have stood for over 2000 years. Would probably have survived longer if maintained properly.

  The pyramids, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos, the Taj Mahal, all are landmark (literally) feats for the contemporary technology and societies.

  You comparing them with modern construction methods necessitated by capitalism, and with modern technology seems an unfair comparison, as well as circular reasoning.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Profit, price pressures, inflation are not necessarily meaningful terms in a different system.

  Homes have been built for many thousands of years longer than we’ve had those as concepts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Agreed.

  But also in multiresidential complexes, condos, and palaces for thousands of people.

  The world will indeed be different if we have different priorities. Capitalism requires high density to sustain the economic engine, other systems do not.

  Under capitalism, capitalisming harder is indeed the only solution. I don’t know how to get you to be able to imagine something without assuming capitalism, but humanity and society did indeed thrive even without it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  My point is, if you read “aunt” as “landlord”, my comment is not about the landlords as much as the system.

  Without landlords, we’d not have a housing crisis. There would be enough housing for everyone, we have plenty of resources and land to build them. The US, not to mention the world, is still big enough for everyone to have their own plot of land and housing.

  How did people live before Capitalism? I’ve read that housing existed before even banking was invented. Somehow there wasn’t a housing crisis back then, until/unless we had exploitation.

  You’re not wrong in what you’re saying though. The basic difference of perspective between you and I, I believe, is that you’re viewing this from inside the capitalist system, where landlords do indeed provide a function. But if we’d not have capitalism, we’d still have housing, and with less value extraction/parasitism.

  As for the obscure anecdote, let’s instead use the simile of marketing. They add no value to you as a consumer, and if there weren’t so many marketers finding what you need would be easier and cheaper (as there would be no marketing cost). For the capitalist they add value, for the rest of us they’re an ever increasing drain on resources - a parasite.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know if I’m leftist, but the US spectrum is well right of most of the world.

  The question is multi-layered. Your aunt may or may not be a bad person, I don’t know her. Them renting out property may or may not be for good reason, even if they’re doing it to “survive” in the capitalistic economy.

  The real issue is that capitalism itself is exploitative, and (depending on where you draw the line) participating may fall under being complicit.

  My understanding of parasitism is extracting resources for their own benefit, with little to no benefit for the exploited/system.

  The first hint of parasitism is amassing resources they aren’t using for living. Your aunt and husband made surplus money to be able to afford buying the properties. Unless they did that by extracting resources, refining them, working them and making provisions for them to be recycled and ecologically compensated - others will have had to pay the cost. Either by working harder than them, or suffering more than them, for example due to an imbalance of ecology. This is one form of parasitism.

  Another perspective of parasitism is inserting themselves as a middle party. Your aunt almost certainly isn’t providing the housing at cost, where rent barely covers their labor and property upkeep. That means they are keeping someone from a home, unless they pay extra to your aunt. Just like a bully.

  Now, this doesn’t mean that your aunt has any malicious intent. The point is that the system itself is evil, like a pyramid scheme of bullies, where each layer extracts something from each underlying layer. This is useful for making ventures, but at the cost of ever increasing exploitation and misery. Especially when capitalists are allowed to avoid paying for restoring the exploited, or incentivised to do it more. I’m sure you’ve heard of enshittification.

  Now, example time!

  I’m sure you’ve thought that air is important for you to survive. And maybe you’ve ever worried that traffic or other pollution might make your air less good for you?

  Enter the capitalist! For a small premium we’ll offer your personalised air solution, a nifty little rebreather loaded with purified air you carry with you all day. The price is so reasonable as well, for only $1/day you can breathe your worries away!

  Now, producing the apparatus means mining and logging upstream of your town, removing natural air filtering and permanently damaging your environment, but they only charge for the machines and labor. Restoration is Future You’s problem. Selling and refilling the apparatus happens to also produce pollution, making the air worse for everyone. But that makes the apparatus more valuable! Price rises to $2/day.

  Competitors arrive, some more successful than others, all leaving ecological devastation and pollution that can’t be naturally filtered. Air gets worse. One brand rises to the top, air is more valuable and lack of competition makes it so that air is now $4/day.

  Then an unethical capitalist figures that if we just make the air slightly worse, profits will go up! They don’t want to be evil, but cutting corners when upgrading the production facility means the pollution gets worse. Other adjacent capitalists see that they also can pollute more without consequences. Air gets worse and price increases to 6$/day.

  Air is starting to get expensive, rebreather sharing services, one-use air bottles, and home purifyers crop up, increasing pollution and raising costs, air is now $8/day for most people.

  People start dying from poor air, new regulations on apparatus safety and mandatory insurance come up, driving prices further to $10/day. You now also need a spare apparatus and maintain it in case your main one breaks down.

  Etc.

  The point of the example is that through a series of innocuous steps, all making perfect sense within capitalism, you are now paying $300/month more to live than before capitalism, with little real benefit to you, and no real choice to opt out.

  Each and every step is parasiting on your life, by requiring you to work harder for that money, and/or suffer more due to pollution and ravaged environment.

  The only solution to not work/suffer into an early grave is to have others work on your behalf, perpetuating the parasitic pyramid scheme. This is where your aunt is, is she evil? Probably not. Is her being an active part of an evil system bad? Yes, yes it is. Capitalism bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fuck geometry⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why can’t a complex number be described in a Banach-Tarsky space?

  In such a case the difference between any two complex numbers would be a distance. And sure, formally a distance would need be a scalar, but for most practical use anyone would understand a vector as a distance with a direction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fuck geometry⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re about as imaginary as numbers are in general.

  Complex numbers have real application in harmonics like electronics, acoustics, structural dynamics, damping, regulating systems, optronics, lasers, interferometry, etc.

  In all the above it’s used to express relative phase, depending on your need for precision you can see it as a time component. And time is definitely a direction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jesus Christ⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In English yes, but not in closer languages like Aramaic, Hebrew (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (Yehoshua)) or Greek (ἰησοῦς (ioesous)).

  Source (a little long but interesting read)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jesus Christ⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Should it more accurately be Yesus?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are You Working on Wednesday⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Go ahead, cry a little, as a treat

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Boiling the ocean⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Bipartisan is such a weird concept for us living in the rest of the world. We have so many more parties than the two in the US.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FAQ: Yes We Suppirt Kinect⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Aww, I thought we were talking about Rimworld

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are You Working on Wednesday⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you, will check it out!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are You Working on Wednesday⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I came across the topic of AI security, and been resding up on it, but as I have a weak background in Machine learning, I’m not really able to follow the frontier discourse.

  I’d very much appreciate any recommendations as to where to find more foundational level materials for getting into it. Any tips?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mentorship Monday - Discussions for career and learning!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a background as a technical specialist and consultant, but not in software. Is the best way to transition through a re-education? Or are there other steps to try out the industry before committing years of school?

  Also, how is the career prospects within the current mass IT layoffs?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Since cats don't pant like dogs how do they release trapped heat?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Cats do pant, but also run hotter and enjoy higher temperatures than humans (24-26 °C depending on race).

  Also, cats have lots of ways to release heat, cats can arrange their fur to release more heat (or burr it to trap more), they lay on cool ground, they can lick themselves for evaporative cooling, and of course seek shade when it gets hot.

  We had a hot summer with temperatures of over 30 °C indoors and I got worried my European shorthair would overheat, got them a gel pad that wicks away heat when laid upon, but they thought it was ridiculous and just laid on the concrete floor in the shade whenever too hot and was super comfy and lazy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the Federation "Communist" or Socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Precisely, so the Federation may be anarchist, even though the member races aren’t.

  With what we know about how the Federation interacts with other races and planets, real world logic would indicate that the humans could be (and live) the model that the Federation is built upon.

  All this is conjecture ofc, and is probably as much an exercise in understanding post-scarcity anarchism as possible Star Trek lore :p

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the Federation "Communist" or Socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Which is inherently anarchist :P

  As it seems a common confusion in this thread, I repeat, anarchism doesn’t have to be without government or rules, several forms of anarchism are focused on not limiting individuals freedoms and/or not allowing power over eachother. Both of which I believe describe how the Federation works.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the Federation "Communist" or Socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s one form of it, but there are plenty other schools of thought that overlap quite significantly with the Federation, check out the primer on Wikipedia.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the Federation "Communist" or Socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Anarchist doesn’t need to mean without government, simply that no one is above another, which is echoed in how the Federation is structured towards the other races.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the Federation "Communist" or Socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d say they’re post-scarcity anarchist. There’s no central/communal resource dispersal as needed for socialism, nor the central/communal resource allocation/planning needed for communism.

  There’s seemingly no authority outside starfleet exerting any power, nor does anyone ever claim a motivation beyond exploration or study (to do something meaningful). The lack of money and unlimited access to replicated resources pending available dilithium also points to a society without exploitative discrepancies.

  The humans also never are reported to have any resource hogging, the only tensions/stratification seem to be militarily (and against external parties also diplomatically), meritocratic, and even then the bottleneck seems mostly to be to not fall behind other races.

  I don’t see neither capitalism, socialism, communism, despotism, theocracy, nor fascism, but many aspects of anarchism. If you’ve read anything about The Culture, they openly speak about being anarchist, and it’s very similar to Star Trek.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For L.G.B.T.Q. People, Moving to Friendlier States Comes With a Cost⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Friendlier states tend to have higher cost of living

  #savedyouaclick

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did they move the comments to the right⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I use Newpipe, it’s not as good as Vanced, but better than reVanced. And good enough that I recoil in horror at the stock app.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why didn't anyone warn me!?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, so that’s why! Here I thought you were just shufflin

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did people refer to clockwise movement before the invention of the clock?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Does the sun rotate with the disc, and faster?

  Wouldn’t sunwise and turnwise be in opposite directions otherwise?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are slavery reparations fair?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course, all the economic rationeles are valid.

  They are also not very compelling. If slaver Europe fucked over Africa for a century, should we compensate them only for stolen labor? How about stolen resources? Caused suffering? Lost progress? Lost lives?

  How about all the exploitation that has happened since, due to slaver Europe having the upper hand? African labor and resources are still valued lower than in richer countries as local working conditions are still poor and exploitative.

  Also, could paying reparations as a lump sum ever measure up to the slow development of infrastructure, knowledge, culture and national pride/trust/stability that comes with building your own wealth?

  We have plenty of experience with aid getting stolen by warlords, and grants commonly get lost to corruption, cronies and other misappropriation, even without the warlords.

  For the fiscal compensation to make sense, we’re talking orders of magnitude larger sums, and they would have to be given together with labor, knowledge, supportive relations, etc. over decades. And also with much fewer strings than our current economic system allows.

  I find that there is no satisfying way to fiscally compensate for a century of exploitation, suffering and oppression, and have found that the sums and arguments are more compelling as an absolution. It’s about the slavers wanting to clear their conscience more than making it right.

  It’s not the most noble reason for it, but it seems do do more for that than for the exploited people. Either change what we’re talking about, or face that your reasons are about you, not them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Record number of teachers quit for mental health reasons in 2021⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  One simple way is to schedule enough teacher so they have time for documentation, planning, follow-ups and grading during school hours.

  That might mean every teacher gets only 2 teaching hours/day to have time to do the rest, could also mean they get support with documentation, follow-ups and similar, through other functions.

  Much in the same way as any other job tbh.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much did photography "stole" painter jobs ?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The difference is that we recognise humans and their history, imperfections and many many influences to be part of what makes both the human and expression unique.

  A lot of the discussion doesn’t grant the machine learning models the same inherent worth as humans get, and thus is viewed as a tool trained to replicate others’ work (rather than a creative agent).

  This means that where a student painter is expected to have a desire to express something, and are putting in hard work in practice and paying tutors. Replacing them with a machine without desires or stories to express, by stealing artwork without neither credit or compensation, to then replace the same people who’ve been exploited in creating the tool, seems unfair.