I get the thrust of the song, but I have a question for you and/or anyone else who has insight:

I make small aggressions, like OP, where I assume I’m costing a corpo and giving to an artist through it, even if minuscule.

Examples:

Similar to OP, I have a streaming service ‘downloaded’ playlist of songs I like. I tend to leave my PC playing them in shuffle/repeat during my workday. I might have my volume on or off depending on my level of focus, but I can’t see how that “engagement” doesn’t benefit the artist without costing me anything – maybe a smidge more electricity.

Since I saw The Spiffing Brit’s runtime video, I no longer close a youtube tab if I decide I want something else. I mute the tab, set the speed to .25 and ignore it for a while. Costs me electricity, not that much bandwidth, and presumably pays the channel more than usual. Maybe fucks with analytics per-video, but probably not enough to bother the creator, and if it fucks with ‘the algorithm’ and pushes people to channels I already like, then that’s a google problem.

I also have an Epic Games account, where I “buy” every single free game. I assume these have either already paid the developer a fixed fee for supporting development, or are paying based on sales volume. Either way, they presumably paid money to be able to offer these as a loss-leader. Most are games I would not have bought anyway, so I’m not costing the developer a potential sale and I will never buy anything through Epic games, so it should be just a loss. I actually want insight on this one, in case there are devs/publishers here. If this costs you when I buy your free game, there might be others like me who just need to know we’re not helping.

Aside from the fact that my engagement with these platforms could be used as leverage (’ we have X million active users…'), I can’t see any negative to my attacks on them. It’s possible the artists can’t perceive it, but if the corpos love it, they wouldn’t make me pass a CAPTCHA to buy a game.

The question, then, is: Am I hurting the artists, or helping them?

This. We’ve seen what republicans want to do. We need to stop them and vote ‘not-republican’ when we can before the ability to do so is gone. The problem is we cannot stop there and only vote every 2-4 years for the least-bad option, we need to make better options. “Both sides” is reductive and hides the problem.

Get involved: find and support people who have your views for all offices: city, county, state, federal, maybe even HOA. Most of these are important. If the incumbent is not working for us, we need to fight them and suggest someone better. If the incumbent is unchallenged, then that’s a travesty and they need a primary, if the same party, or an opponent.

For the a while now we’ve seen the ‘left’ chase the ‘center’ and people like OP are mad at this. The solution is not ‘vote blue no matter who’, but that is a bandage to slow the bleeding and will resonate with the less-involved allies we have. The solution is to prove that we are the majority and push our own into leadership roles where they can make things better.

If you’re angry right now, run for office or canvas for someone who is. Being mad, depressed or just bitching online isn’t fixing anything. You can make things better, and it starts with finding a ‘blue’ worth voting for.

That looks great!

Growing up, I despised eggs except the ones that were thoroughly disguised(as in leavening)… I had a bad egg-salad experience as a kid and it stuck with me. In the last few years, though, I’ve come around and can enjoy them.

I’ll have to give them a shot as a pizza topping. I imagine they vaguely fit the same texture/umami role that a slice of mozzarella does for a margherita pizza.

Thanks for the suggestion and enjoy yours tomorrow!

Everything except the eggs sounds great – and I’m not judging the egg, just curious:

I don’t think of egg as a topping that would survive being baked. Does that go on before or after cooking? sliced or diced?

I just tried to open a soda can with my somewhat modern can opener (try them, btw, no sharp can edges) but it doesn’t fit the lid of my can. My day is ruined.

Like many things, a tool is only as smart as the wielder. There’s still a ton of critical thinking that needs to happen as you do something as simple as bake bread. Using an AI tool to suggest ingredients can be useful from a creative perspective, but should not be assumed accurate at face value. Raisins and Dill? maybe ¯\(ツ)/¯, haven’t tried that one myself.

I like AI, for being able to add detail to things or act as a muse, but it cannot be trusted for anything important. This is why I’m ‘anti-AI’. Too many people (especially in leadership roles) see this tool as a solution for replacing expensive humans with something that ‘does the thinking’; but as we’ve seen elsewhere in this thread, AI CANT THINK. It only suggests items that are statistically likely to be next/near based on its input.

In the Security Operations space, we have a phrase “trust but verify”. For anything AI, I would use 'doubt, then verify" instead. That all said. AI might very well give you a pointer to the place to ask how much motrin an infant should get. Hopefully, that’s your local pediatrician.

Brother is the other secret, though it seem like maybe even they have turned… the problem with making a solid piece of equipment that will last for a decade is you consume your customer base and can’t show ‘growth’ constantly.

My Brother color laser (model 3170, bought in 2016) doesn’t print the perfect photos, but that’s not what I use it for. I print coloring sheets and camp forms for my kiddos and random forms for adult life. It ran on the original toner carts for around 5 years, with black being replaced first on its own. There’s no inkjet in the world that will have 5 year-old carts work, but laser toner doesn’t dry out.

Real talk. Ubisoft in general have made some great games. Their current business model is to pump out repeats of things that worked, and so earn our scorn for them ‘as of right now’.

Who played AC 1 and didn’t want more. That we’re now up to AC 76 doesn’t diminish that they made something fun before they beat it to death.

Even their primary accomplishment of making every open-world game follow their formula of ‘1000 sidequests, item hunts and mini-puzzles’ doesn’t detract from the fact that those were really fun the first few times.

I wish the best to all the ex-Ubisoft developers. Go make cool shit without the $business oversight$. In an ideal world, the publisher should be there to cover the gaps when a new concept falls flat, not to force developers to keep doing the same profitable thing and otherwise stifle innovation.

This is concise and reasonable. This would be far, far, faaaar less arbitrary and capricious suffering than he has already inflicted on others. He’d be getting off quite lightly.

As a description of the levels of power I personally have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

I’m still at ballot box myself.

“Yelling at strangers [on the internet]” is the Soap Box, and while we’re pretty well past that as a country due to social media echo chambers and the like, it’s still useful. If there’s enough social pressure on a given topic, we can change policy. At the very least, being vocal (including online) lets other people know they are not alone.

I believe that we have effectively lost the jury box at this time. The supreme court seems to have abandoned rationality in a variety of cases to-date, and even in a best case, the judicial system works far too slowly compared to how fast new bullshit gets thrown at them by the current executive. Not to mention the cost to an individual average voter to try and sue would be prohibitive. Groups like SPLC and ACLU are helping here, but see point 2 (too slow).

I don’t need to defend myself, but I have voted in every municipal election I’ve been able to since my early twenties in 2004. About the only way I haven’t used my power here is by running myself, but I don’t think I’m qualified for public office and would only siphon money from someone better who might win.

That leaves us with the ammo box. For progressives in solidly blue states, whose votes were counted, but ultimately found irrelevant, this is the next step, hence firebombing tesla dealerships (Can’t find a recent walmart news article, but the idea is still there). In my purple state, I’m in my local precinct org and canvassing, but that doesn’t really help when the margin of victory for your party is like 20%.

I will acknowledge the point that Americans – in general – are apathetic. I have a significant amount of distaste for anyone who says they are ‘not political’ or who didn’t vote in 2024 or earlier. Sometimes though, you get a wake-up call after the fact. Anyone who didn’t vote or voted for trump in 2024, but is now pissed off has been awakened (dare I say, “woke”) and that should be celebrated, not derided. I love the leopards-eating-faces memes, but we really need to be reaching out to these people instead of mocking them. There is now a chink in their ignorance-armor.

You got a lot of anger in responses to your posts in this thread. The ‘in general’ phrase carries a lot of weight, but isn’t all that applicable here. This community is likely to be like me and very involved or at least informed. Phrases like “You are all at fault…” is going to raise hackles, even when clarified by ‘proportional to your share of power that you didn’t use.’

I’m trying to understand this point. I’m in a purple state. By definition, that means that we’re on the cusp of being either democratic EC votes or republican EC votes, as well as senators, governors and other state-level offices.

One of the (minor, but still there) reasons I haven’t moved is because my vote actually matters here. If I moved to a solidly blue state, I would be removing a blue vote and making my current state more red.

One of my largest fears is that we continue sorting all the democratic voters into a small handful of blue states and lock in a permanent minority in government due to how we allocate EC votes and allot power in the Senate.

If anything, we need the people in deeply blue states to migrate out into other places and help push our country towards actual balance. If we took 2% of the 2024 democratic Californians (9m Kamala votes vs 6m Trump, 2% of the 9m is 180k, and we could easily do this several more times) and they moved to a low-population red state like Wyoming, Montana or North Dakota (spot checking 2024 vote counts), they would have no EC impact in California, but would have guaranteed Senate seats and EC votes. They would also have huge power in their new local and state government, since the total republican vote count majority was less than that tiny portion of California.

I know this is a simplistic way of looking at the numbers and not the humans, but blaming someone in a red/purple state for staying there is just not helping.

We can celebrate the ideal of a person willing to fight back while still defending the actual person who may or may not have been the person who did it.

“Luigi” is gestalt:

1. An ideal of a person willing to fight for all of us against an oppressive system
2. A Human who is charged and not yet legally proven guilty of a crime; who may or may not be a scapegoat

We hail as heroes those who fight against oppression even when, and often because, their fighting breaks ‘the rules.’

If Luigi shot this CEO, then he deserves our respect as a hero: A person who has sacrificed to remove a serial killer who was above the law. If Luigi did not shoot this CEO, then he deserves our support as a victim of the above system.

Sharing memes and keeping him in the public zeitgeist supports both.

In defense of gluten-free-bread producers… the thing that makes bread good is gluten. it’s the glue that holds all the bread together, hence the name.

Gluten-free bread is just individual carbohydrates that are close enough together to be called a dough, but don’t actually like each other and will peace out given the smallest chance.

I’m sure there is some chemical or product that will stick these things together enough to be bread-like, and also not trigger side effects for gluten-sensitive folks, but it probably causes cancer or something worse.

Side note: my wife likes UDI’s ancient grain gluten free bread, which is stored frozen. It makes the fucking best croutons you’ve ever had: let it warm up, spread to go ‘stale’ and then chop, season and toast. heavenly. The croutons “melt”, likely the lack of gluten, but still have a crunch before they get wet in your mouth.

I’m SO mad at this story. There is no reason to charge the parents. As others have stated, helicoptering kiddos is detrimental, and they need to be allowed to roam their environment – That can come at the cost of danger, but we cannot be expected to grow with 0 risk.

Sure, as a parent, you can state: ‘don’t go there’, and ‘always look both ways’, but kids are kids and there’s only so much you can enforce without being overbearing. In this scenario, without video evidence, there’s no clear conclusion about fault for either the driver or the child.

I’m okay with letting the driver off (criminally, let insurance pay the family but don’t put the driver in jail) and acknowledging this as an accidental death, especially since he stuck around and is complying. Charging the parents for negligence, though, is just fucking brutal when they are suffering the loss of a child, not to mention the impact on the older son, who probably is feeling an unreasonable amount unreasonable of guilt: “I could have held his hand; I could have reminded him of the road…” (not his quotes, my presumed internal dialog). Again, as others have stated, this is a city planning problem, not a parental one: If there was a way to walk to a grocery store that didn’t cross a 4-lane road, that’d be a better option, but there are plenty of places where that is not possible.

These parents do NOT need the extra burden of being held legally liable for an accident and anyone blaming them for this without knowing them personally and being able to describe other aspects of their parent as negligent is just an asshole.

Exactly.

I want the person down the street, who is barely able to pay rent and afford groceries on their min-wage job to instead be able to be secure. I want them to have housing, clothing and nutrition. Free stuff for others, not for me.

I’m quite happy to pay for that ‘free’ stuff in the form of taxes, as long as my tax dollars actually go to it instead of a billionaire’s scorecard.

My problem with threads like this is that I only have 24 hours a day, and I’ve accumulated a critical mass of content creators to the point where I cannot keep up.

Which of these awesome people do I ignore?! What information do I leave behind!? How am I supposed to get anything useful done with my life?!?

Also, check out Chris Boden if you want to see something cool!

I’m no longer at my computer where typing is easy. I thank all of you for responding in good faith, and I’ll be reading the various links. Thanks for engaging with me.

Okay. My method doesn’t work. We can’t reform the system from within.

What does?

What’s your perfect solution? How do we get there?

I’m honestly curious. I’m pissed at the status quo, and don’t know how to make things better with my limited personal power.

I’m now mobile, so my formatting will suffer.

Capitalism = bad. I’m fully behind that, and see it as the root of the problem. What I don’t see is a path forward that doesn’t involve incremental progress, even if not all demographics are served. At least not without violence that will be disrupt even more.

I think this is where we disagree, but I might still be missing something.

You (assorted folks responding to me) want an epoch change where we rise up and take back the power we have. We have it right now, but the price to pay to enforce that is too high for me.

I want a progression where we work towards owning that power. We had it partially when unions were still strong, but it was undermined. In my mind, the solution is education, but I have no power to enact that directly. My ability to influence is limited to my local org and voting.

A green party, socialist party, etc, will never win an election in our current environment. Votes there are literally useless, if not spoiling a candidate that has at least some if your views. The system is rigged, sure, but you can’t flip this table and walk away.

Can we separate this discussion into talking about politics and elections and eliminate Israel/Palestine? I’m a-religious, pro Palestine, pro humanitarian, but having that angle seems to quickly degenerate every conversation into ‘both sides are genocide’ and avoid the’how do we move forward’ question. I think these can be separated, but maybe that is also a place we disagree.

I feel we’re playing different games, or using different terms.

Help me understand.

Firstly. Let’s define words: I’m assuming/using my view of a US-centric Liberal vs Conservative.

Liberal: Democratic party, wants to make life better for the larger segment of the population.

Conservative: Republican party, wants to consolidate power and wealth in the hands of a few.

That’s my personal and biased broad-strokes view of the political landscape.

Conservatives have managed to gather enough popular support that people will vote against their best interest for either perceived economic gain or for ‘hurt the other people more.’

Stepping back even further, what is your end-goal? How do you respect the desires of millions of people without some sort of representation, and if you have such, how do you ensure that the representative aligns with the goals of their constituents?

Sadly, I’m offline for the day, but I’d be happy to continue this conversation.