uriel238
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on Gaming industry right now 19 hours ago:
Since all the regulatory agencies that keep corporations in check are captured, we’re going to see more and more abuses of consumers, especially through EULAs and TOS.
In fact, TOS and EULA abuse is so useful (thanks to the DMCA) we’re now seeing proprietary software added into devices just to force obsolescence.
See also UNEQUAL TREATIES
See also RIGHT TO REPAIR - Comment on I wonder why the world is on fire? A mystery 19 hours ago:
Although the US does go around saying we’re not capitalist and we’re not socialist even as we give hundreds of billions USD to corporate interests and have huge socialized programs like the US armed forces and the interstate highway system.
In fact, the Republicans disparage the Democrats by accusing them of being communist, when they totally are not, even the SDAs.
- Comment on I wonder why the world is on fire? A mystery 19 hours ago:
Some socialist systems succeed until their territory gets seized by colonial interests. The US and GB are both guilty many times over of being the predatory belligerent. Most of our wars in the 20th century were about commercial interests seizing the resources of undeveloped nations, and then forcing their populations to work at meager wages.
In fact, when Lenin started his great communist experiment, the first thing Wilson did was unite rest of the industrialized world to sanction the USSR, so (at the risk of sounding like a tankie) we don’t know how well the Soviet Union would have fared if it was allowed to flourish on its own terms. (I don’t expect it would be a perfect utopia, but it may have been able to stave off the decent into corruption for a while.)
- Comment on I wonder why the world is on fire? A mystery 19 hours ago:
Some socialist systems succeed until their territory gets seized by colonial interests. The US and GB are both guilty many times over of being the predatory belligerent. Most of our wars in the 20th century were about commercial interests seizing the resources of undeveloped nations, and then forcing their populations to work at meager wages.
In fact, when Lenin started his great communist experiment, the first thing Wilson did was unite rest of the industrialized world to sanction the USSR, so (at the risk of sounding like a tankie) we don’t know how well the Soviet Union would have fared if it was allowed to flourish on its own terms. (I don’t expect it would be a perfect utopia, but it may have been able to stave off the decent into corruption for a while.)
- Comment on I wonder why the world is on fire? A mystery 20 hours ago:
It’s greed at the upper levels. People in the lower classes develop hospitality and compassion skills as a matter of survival. Transients routinely share cigarettes and liquor when they have it. Those in the middle class can learn if they’re actively taught to share.
It’s in the upper middle to upper classes that develop greed as a survival habit, and at the tippy top, multi-millionaires and billionaires are willing to shank each other (or arrange their paramilitaries to do it) if it means they can acquire their rivals’ assets. There’s a story about Andrew Carnegie realizing that J. P. Morgan was totally that kind of murderous monster sometime after selling Morgan his steel company in 1901.
There are multiple examples of mutualist societies that take care of each other and don’t resent their meek and disabled. And in our history, they commonly thrive until imperialists and colonizers seize their territories by force.
- Comment on Videogames: Then and Now 1 day ago:
I’m pretty sure the current failure of AAA gaming has to do to companies getting captured by private equity, but the rise of lootboxes, of subscription-based games and NFTs softened up the AAA industry enough to make it vulnerable to private equity share grabs.
- Comment on I said meow! 1 day ago:
Yep. My cat is on a diet of half a cup a day. So for the two hours before I wake up, he has his say.
- Comment on You'll regret it 1 day ago:
Curiously I have pee dreams where I pee, but it doesn’t take and I soon need to pee again.
So my brain seems to know how to pretend pee.
- Comment on Amen 2 days ago:
To be fair, even if your sins are meager, your knees will buckle under your weight. That is just how old age works.
- Comment on james 2 days ago:
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. – Lyndon B. Johnson
- Comment on No room for romance when there's rising and grinding to be had! 2 days ago:
- Comment on Overrated GTA hype 2 days ago:
Rockstar got toxic long before GTA 5, so it’s been a while since I’ve played any Rockstar game.
- Comment on james 3 days ago:
It’s more of an argument that livelihood of human beings should not depend on employment or productivity.
The system is intentionally kept that way to preserve stratified social hierarchies, because a small ultra-wealthy number of people would rather be aristocrats in a shithole banana dictatorship than middle managers in a post-scarcity communist state (with a higher standard of living).
- Comment on james 3 days ago:
IRL, LLMs respond with hyper-sycophancy and humans reply as if it is simultaneously their girlfriend and Jesus.
- Comment on As billionaires’ wealth soars, US workers struggle: ‘The rich keep getting richer for no good reason’ 4 days ago:
The wealthiest 0.00001%, about 20 individuals, hold wealth equal to 12% of the US’s gross domestic output, according to data compiled by the French economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, about four times greater than levels seen during the gilded age.
We are at unprecedented levels of fucked.
Note that while a billionaire can buy elections and control governments, a trillionaire can buy all the elections and control all the governments.
Our first trillionaire, even if temporary, is an apocalyptic sign, the breaking of a seal.
- Comment on *laughs nervously* 4 days ago:
San Francisco since the 21st century has had four or five public restrooms that are automated and self cleaning, and free! Why? Because even then poop from the homeless and impoverished was a problem.
Not allowing people to use your business restroom is just a good way to end up with occasionally cleaning up poop on your grounds, and your back alleys perpetually smelling like urine. In the meantime, if you do let people use your restroom for free, they’re more inclined to return to your establishment to patronize it.
Small businesses in the US like restaurants and cafes will lock their bathrooms anyway more out of habitual miserliness: Laws in the US immensely favor large chains and franchises, so small business owners and managers get used to doing everything they can to raise revenues and lower costs (including stealing tips and underpaying staff) so the petit bourgeoisie for a while seemed crueler than big corporations. (As workplace regulation violations are not being investigated, big businesses are catching up, as per Amazon and Facebook). In 2026, small resellers rarely open their restrooms up to the public, and some restaurants and cafes don’t feature restrooms at all.
And so major cities all have poop problems, either managed by municipal cleaners or by ordinance requiring property owners keep their grounds clean.
- Comment on The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week 6 days ago:
In the years after the epidemic lockdown the RTO mandates started coming hard and fast, and it was evident for two clear reasons.
a) Upper management was feeling lonely and wanted its entourage back. They feel powerful when they see busy workers being busy for their benefit. See also BULLSHIT JOBS, and…
b) Companies were stuck in leases of expensive business space that was now empty, and that just felt too wasteful, so the vibes solution was RTO mandates.
- Comment on "influencers" are setting us back 6 days ago:
Ugh. I have Medicare so I get notices from Dr. Oz on occasion.
- Comment on oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members! 1 week ago:
Oh, there are peaceful movements that work. But then the autocrats can sometimes be eager to fire the first shots. Take January 6th, 2021 for example.
As Nelson Mandela put it, A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire.
- Comment on oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members! 1 week ago:
No, but we’ve given Antifa protestors fifty years plus for conspiring to shoot ICE. Give us time.
- Comment on oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members! 1 week ago:
We’ve had plenty of examples of what happens when you let autocrats take power. It’s not like Trump didn’t tell us who he was. For that matter, it’s not like the Republican Party hasn’t been obvious about who they are since Reagan.
And yet we keep electing them.
Maybe we do so because it’s macho, and voting for anyone else is effeminate. Or we do so to punish the Democrats when they’re wishy-washy. Or we do so to own the libs (and in 2026, to return non-whites and women to non-citizen status.)
It’s a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, and I’m unsure we can’t get ourselves out without a whole lot of people suffering and dying.
- Comment on Finally an explanation 1 week ago:
That is the traditional quote.
It’s also not what I said.
The Church has long discovered that once you name someone or something as the Devil, you are justified in doing anything to them.
In 2026, see also, Antifa.
- Comment on It’s Well Past Time for a Four-Day Workweek 1 week ago:
The four-day work week movement presumes that wages will increase so that life remains affordable. Mind you this was before the current era in which life isn’t affordable on a forty-hour workweek.
Hopefully, when we collectively decide we’ve had enough, we’ll expand our distaste of slavery to cover all forms of bonded servitude.
- Comment on It’s Well Past Time for a Four-Day Workweek 1 week ago:
- Comment on Finally an explanation 1 week ago:
It can be super difficult when your only opportunity for survival is to become one of Immortan Joe’s war boys, and are trained that your only path to redemption is to be a hero, to be witnessed as you sacrifice yourself in battle.
- Comment on Finally an explanation 1 week ago:
The problem is that landlords are just the players who got the lucky drops, often the children of lords and merchants who lucked into success.
And once in that position, no one wants to give up their advantage.
Experimental psychologists have done tests on this, and found that it takes effect even in the short term. Monopoly players who are (selected at random) given extra salary money at Go! and extra turns will play, win, and insist that they won by their own skill and merit. Those advantaged also will indulge more in the table snacks.
- Comment on Finally an explanation 1 week ago:
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince us he exists.
- Comment on Men against bush 1 week ago:
In the aughts, I had a girlfriend who was conflicted, as she loved the feeling of bare skin but would get ingrown hairs in the week or two to follow.
- Comment on Men against bush 1 week ago:
I became sexually active in the early 1990s when the Brazilian look was big in porn, but most women still had full pubes, or if they were fancy, went for the French runway.
So my brain associated the shaved look with porn, and bush with IRL, which messed with my head on the occasion I had a partner who waxed herself clean.
My experience is that bush is easier to maintain and is easier on the skin. Shaving is fun for a single date, but results in a scratchy period and runs the risk of ingrown hairs.
- Comment on Japanese man tries to reminisce with his brothers 1 week ago:
To be fair, at the time, no one wanted Italy involved. In fact, the alliance between Germany and Vichy France was broken during the fighting in Casablanca because the French said Help us! Don’t send Italians and Germany sent Italians.
