OpenStars

OpenStars , 3 hours ago

Someone interested in controlling others... a boss.

OpenStars , 12 hours ago

"At those rates, it'd be crazy not to!" - sorry, but I felt it needed to be said. :-(

OpenStars OP , 1 day ago

Honestly I'm not sure what to do with this. I wanted to spread the word of this interesting, well-written (imho) article, so I put it into BestOfLemmy, but that wasn't quite right, and now it's here, even though it is news, and in the companion community to globalnews where it came from even, which also does not seem right!?

Basically I guess I want this article - or possibly more likely globalnews and interestingnews - to be promoted more highly, b/c I had never subscribed to either until today, so they are definitely not getting noticed as much as I would like, at least they were not by me.

Ofc my ignorance isn't reason enough to hold a TED talk, but I am saying that surely it is not just me who did not notice that these existed before today, when they have only a few thousand subscribers, compared to the several tens of thousands of subscribers to other News etc. communities?

OpenStars OP , 1 day ago

Upvoting for the lolz, but also allow me (if you will) to whole-heartedly disagree: the way to deal with a problem is to first acknowledge that it is happening, and obtain a proper diagnosis; plus more to the point I was impressed with the lack of click-baityness that this particular one had, which seems exceedingly rare these days.

Every time I get to where I wonder if I should decide to not click on articles anymore, b/c 99.99% of them leave a profound sense of disappointment in their wake of being an absolute waste of my time, I come across such a rare specimen that makes me wish that we had a community dedicated to like "real news only - not alternative or 'enhanced' or empty fluff that wants your click regardless" that restores my faith that there is solid content out there, if only we manage to find it.

Worse, even the old metrics to filter them no longer seem to work - e.g. The Guardian has routinely broken my trust lately, but more complex than simply all one way or the other yay or nay, it started with the titles being shit but the content was fine, now more often I see that the first few paragraphs are shit but later it eventually finds a point to it, and lately I am also starting to see articles where the entire thing is crap (iirc?).

So I decided to be the change that I wanted to see in the world, and at least promote this one more heavily. :-) That way people that have sworn off traditional news sources can know that this one exists, in case they are interested. I wish an entire community of people could share the load of doing that work, but it seems too much effort and other people have different ideas of what the upvote button is for - e.g. reading just the title but not the article? - so I understand that it will not happen, but I wanted to at least share just this one:-).

Also, I mean no slight against the other articles in that community or its moderation practices - I did not even know about it until today, and only happened to stumble across this article in All b/c I was not subscribed to it. But e.g. news@lemmy.world I have unsubscribed to b/c many of those articles seem worthless to me (example), and I have even started to block some of the posters who contribute nothing but those types of posts. The Fediverse requires such heavy curation to become usable, but I can't control it all, so I at least attempt to control myself, and be that change that I would like to see happen.:-)

OpenStars OP , 1 day ago

Upvoting b/c yes, but also... it is though? Click it. It is to https://lemmy.zip/post/17644464, which is a Lemmy post, that itself links to an article, but there are comments... well okay so far only mine:-P, but theoretically people could put their additional comments onto that post!:-)

OpenStars OP , 1 day ago

Possibly, but that is why I put that last paragraph stating that I had never heard of that community before. At a quick glance, it seems to be number 13 in the rankings of communities that have the word "news" contained within them, by subscriber number, and with 2.18k subscribers is <10-fold smaller than World News@lemmy.world with 37.1k subscribers.

So perhaps that entire community needs promotion, here in this community or elsewhere? Since I was not subscribed to it, I suspect that my All feed was de-emphasizing it, or perhaps not explicitly but indirectly it would preferentially emphasize posts that are somewhat popular elsewhere, so with <10-fold subscribers that community was simply not making its way to me organically terribly often, or at least was not back when I last went on a rampage hunting for things to subscribe to.

I have cleaned up my feed significantly by blocking several even non-political communities from Lemmy.ml (e.g. memes and comics and such, b/c despite their rules they kept putting in politics into every single thing), before I blocked that instance entirely. I have no desire to beat that dead horse here, just pointing out that at one point those communities also dominated my feed but now that they do not I am starting to see more content that I am more interested in, such as this.

But good point - at this juncture the interesting discussion about this topic seems to be here:-). I had expected (hoped?) to see more lively discussion in the post itself, especially if it were promoted more, but that does not seem to be happening.

Edit: also, I do not recall having heard of the first of those other two communities either. But I cross-posted there, and will delete from here as you pointing out that it does not match the scope here.

OpenStars , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

And yet, still CEO I see...

Sorry for misinformation - see comment below.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Military-industrial contracts... I doubt he will ever face consequences that he does not choose for himself. :-|

OpenStars , 1 day ago

We obviously haven't read the article, yet feel entitled to comment on it all the same! /s bc not having read it myself, I just presume that's the case 🤣.

More importantly, why are you surprised at that?

Social media is more about feelings than facts, especially when it comes to precision in the details - the barrier to speak is very low, on purpose, to allow us to vent our frustrations at the world being unfair and corrupt and twisted.

In this case it is fairly understandable - he is a very bad man who did very bad things. He has now admitted to a subset of the badness, and people wish that he had gone further to admit it all, so people talk as if that were the case.

Again, that's just my guess, but we cannot control the world, only ourselves.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Oh... I thought they had someone already and this was him, sorry - I edited my comment to apologize for misinformation, thanks for the update!:-)

OpenStars , 1 day ago

If you turn them 90°, what are they then?

OpenStars , 1 day ago

The riddle has been solved!

img

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Surely that's some of it it no doubt... but also a terrifying possibility is that they legit don't know at all, like it's a real money hole that stuff comes in vs. out and they have no idea at all where it went... (as opposed to someone knowing but not wanting to say)

OpenStars , 1 day ago

the rhetorical question: “Are you better off relative to previous times? Housing leads the list of things where the answer to that question today for many people is: ‘No, I’m not better off.’”

There, now you've read the article.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

There are a LOT of "ifs" and "assuming" and such in your comment. You combine "spots of the midwest" with "walkability" (something it is not exactly known for in general, though I agree that there are rare spots that are ofc), and while you did list several examples, I wonder how many total houses are for sale there? There are ~330 million people in the USA, so even if there are 330k houses that is still only 0.1% of the total - though granted, not everyone is looking for a home, especially if they already have one (and yet, many older people are looking to downsize, at the same time that younger people currently expanding their families by having children are looking to upsize).

Also, black people and minorities - including women these days - do not feel ARE not safe in many midwestern locations. Paying more to remain alive is arguably a good cost-to-benefit trade-off when the alternative, as evidenced by e.g. Ferguson, MO, could be your death, or worse that of your children. In life you tend to get what you pay for, though some are required to pay more than others. A situation like a woman getting raped, being forced to carry the child to term, but with complications ends up dying herself, maybe leaving behind surviving children, can lead to generational levels of poverty and debt from the medical expenses alone, plus lack of care & training of the children for them to exist in the modern corporate climate where e.g. surliness is punishable by being quickly let go - is the risk-to-reward ratio worth all of that? It should at least be factored in.

Internet accessibility is another concern, for those looking to purchase more cheaply while doing the WFH thing. It sounds great to go cheaper / more affordable until you drop too many calls with your boss(es) and get passed up to renew your contract (isn't every job such in the current gig eCoNoMy?), over someone with a tenth your skillset but who kisses butt better than you, including having their wealthy(-ier) parents (contribute to) purchase(-ing) their home for them in a nice(-r) neighborhood with perfect (or at least better) internet.

And how many jobs are even available at Rivian, much less salaried ones? I tried to do a search and was given a quick summary like "5 in my area" but everything wanted to tell me salary amounts rather than number of job openings. Still, I highly doubt that there are hundreds of thousands of job openings.

So while I am upvoting your comment for contributing to the conversation, it all seems extremely niche imho, not able to save most people from their economic hardships, even if it could perhaps work for a thousand or so people, mostly white, and especially unmarried men or possibly infertile women - but even then there are medical considerations affecting everyone too, such as the fact that decent doctors are currently fleeing those states, rejecting lucrative-looking job opportunities b/c of the literal bodily harm that they may come to if they were to go (or remain), and more importantly the ethical dilemma that doing so would entail. Also, even for a white person, how great is it to be surrounded by people talking about black people as sub-human; or for a man to be surrounded by such talking about women not being capable of making choices for their own bodies; or for a straight person... - well you get the idea? Do not underestimate the amount of stress that this causes - b/c if you ever let slip that you sympathize, you can be branded a "traitor", which can earn you some far worse treatment than even members of that "other side" - e.g. look at how Pence was treated, more so than e.g. Nancy Pelosi who was legit on the actual, other side, but him they wanted to literally behead with a irl physical guillotine.

Still, I am glad you mentioned it, I only take issue with the things left out like how it is not available to everyone, and the problems that even those that can do it would face. I hope this also added to the conversation.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

It took me a while to realize what you meant:-). Expanding upon grue's comment that described it perfectly, we do that here often to represent saying something "under your breath", or alternatively saying the REAL thing, either inside or outside the strikethrough depending on context. In this case it depicts like someone in a stream-of-speaking manner might state "...days - do not feel, no wait, strike that, ARE not...", to emphasize how someone might feel at first that it is a mere feeling, but wait no, it's actually so much more than that, it is an absolute fact. :-)

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Oh absolutely yes. I mean, prior to Roe v. Wade being overturned, it was even relatively safe for women there too, I would guess.

Back when I was on Reddit I used to read a lot of posts on nursing subs, and I recall a story where some guy brought in federal funding to start an entire institute somewhere east of Springfield, Missouri iirc. Think of all those jobs... However, he cancelled it and left the state b/c of all the literal death threats he received during the early days of the pandemic. AN ENTIRE INSTITUTE!!?!! And iirc he wasn't even so much concerned with himself as his family like his daughter. 2020 was not a "safe" place for a medical researcher to be in Missouri. That state is actually somewhat known for this too - e.g. that is where Hawley was the only senator to vote against a child sex slave trafficking bill (surely there could not be any uh... nefarious uh... "reasons" for such, wink? 🤮).

A mere house with four walls and a roof over your head is not a home. People outright desire to pay for solid rather than unreliable infrastructure - electricity, policing, services like trash collection, a bridge if you need it, etc. - these things cost money, at which point the corporations tacking on enormous overheads to price people out of owning a "good" home is an actual travesty of justice, that will literally get people killed, as they instead have to compromise on something, like access to medical care and safety.

Edit: I don't know about Atlanta in particular, but any actual "city" will be liberal (I would guess?) - e.g. not have full-on card-carrying KKK members as their police, and that one with the CDC I would guess would have good healthcare? Even if someone had to drive a bit to get to it.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

I mean, we lost that battle too, and will lose more to come, but the war is too early to tell.

What I see is America becoming more divided than it has been for any of our lifetimes. Some women, in some places, have rights, whereas in other places those rights are not recognized as such.

This shows me that we haven't lost the war, yet, just pushed it to the state rather than federal level. Maybe we will lose, half a year from now even, but for now there's a lot of room to make things better, locally.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Weiner in particular is probably a bad example, as the other responder to your comment pointed out, but in general I think we need to see more of that kind of thinking. The Left eats its own - like Al Franken - leaving the Right to gobble up power, pushing forward even people like George Santos, revealing the total lack of ethics standing in their way to get it.

Which is why they will win, eventually - facts be damned, bc this is the era of Alternative Facts - unless we pull our heads out of our asses and focus! e.g. if people protest not-vote for Biden due to the Gaza situation, or gas prices, or whatever, I don't see how the "moral purity" that would result will in any way be preferable to Trump doing far, FAR worse.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

So what happened to the left then, for it to have become so hopelessly inept? HRC was extremely disconnected from any irl people, but so are all such wealthy individuals who don't live in the same world that the rest of us mere slobs humans do - is it really just a function that her campaign manager was not as good as the efforts put forth from the other side, similarly to how legal battles are won by lawyers rather than actual matters of substance like facts? It certainly doesn't help that various outside actors got involved - with the numerous and exceedingly severe "email scandals", but even aside from those she really seemed to be struggling with campaigning.

What it feels like is two giants fighting - the elites (and I think you know but to be absolutely clear, not the paper masks that they wear like "Biden" or "Trump") - while the rest of us poor chumps get stepped on as they do. Which is obviously true, but somehow not fully, either, bc the true giants don't even care (much) who wins bc they have the system so rigged that they win either way. The latter we could not begin to fight, but we may actually get to choose our own brand of toothpaste, if we work hard enough at it. And women's rights seems like it is something up for grabs that way?

Especially, and this is the crucial part of my point, at the local level - at least currently, until the conservative politicians decide that they need another win and take that as well. While we argue amongst ourselves but do actually nothing to stop it.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Not merely the USA, as e.g. Brexit shows - this is happening everywhere, across the majority of the world stage, and in a targeted manner especially the Western nations. Even before Putin, things were set in motion, and we knew it at the time even yet did nothing to halt it, like a cancer growing or a virus infection, and because it presents as "us" we leave it alone, until it is ready to burst out and reveal its true intentions, when hiding is no longer necessary. To illustrate, one example seems to be the creation of Fox News, but surely that is not the only such thing.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

YOUR kids would, I suspect, be better off than most kids in the USA - bc having parents that actually give a damn helps so much:-).

Will we keep up military?

^This right there - this is about all that we have going for us. We provide protection and direct services, which isn't nothing, nor is it never improperly abused (more's the pity), but it is something. Otherwise, what, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter/X - these are the "innovations" that we share with the world? Along with Hollywood and whatever art like fashion we can get people to care about?

Anyway, things look bleak right now - bc, you know, they are:-D - but also remember: our media lies to us. Constantly. "If it bleeds it leads", but conversely all the dry boring stuff simply doesn't get reported, which is a travesty. Like how Biden made happen a MAJOR breakthrough in railway workers, taking six months of negotiations but eventually delivering everything that they asked for iirc including scheduling issues and PTO and sick leave (the dedicated latter is minimal but the former is flexible and can be used for anything) - that's hella impressive, and considering how no other president has done such for railway workers specifically addressed a huge gaping hole in our nation's infrastructure, with that form of transportation being so crucial to us all, mostly in ways we don't even take any time at all to think about. And yet what did the media say about it? So when they preach doom & gloom for like climate change and the economy, setting aside how those are truly accurate, keep in mind that it's also extremely biased.

Things won't be the same as before - they won't be as good as when life was easy. And maybe that's for the better even bc damn did the generation that is putting us into this mess get complacent and entitled. But we'll move forward regardless. And it's not all bad - e.g. all the fantastic medical breakthroughs, which keeps happening even if they are for like highly specific diseases, yet for those that have them it makes all the difference, and also every advance helps scientists learn and makes possible future ones. 😁

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Without having heard the podcast yet, I can assume that the conservatives won by actually trying, aka giving a damn about winning. They listened to their base - okay so abortion is bad, check, also gays are bad, check, etc. - then went on an enormous campaign that lasted for decades as you said, until they finally fucking delivered on what they promised... or some facsimile thereof. And now that they did, some conservative folks are finally questioning whether it was a good thing after all... but anyway the most important stuff of all got taken care of: tax cuts on the wealthy, check; also owning the libturds, check.

Trump goes to jail? Who cares, they still banned abortions. The nation slides into a totalitarian regime? So long as gays are prevented from marrying one another, that still counts as a win! OMG I wish I were joking!! 🤮 But that is reality, and conservatives are facing it.

Whereas if Hillary Clinton had faced it, maybe she would have campaigned a bit harder in Midwestern states, rather than merely make comments about liking grits and carrying hot sauce in her purse.

Anyway as you said, run for city councils and schoolboards. Conservatives do that, based on their alternative facts, but liberals with our actual true facts usually seem to not bother, at which point ofc they will win, by default - that's just how that works, especially when someone runs unopposed. We may talk about UBI or whatever, and some exceedingly rare instances are able to give such things a try, but for the most part it's the slow grind, the basic gains, the slow and steady progress that wins the race. Maybe we can (re-)learn what we seem to have forgotten from ye olden decades by watching modern conservatives.

As the great man Jon Stewart once said (in reference to media), "liberals aim to be correct, while conservatives aim to be effective". I don't fully know what that means, except FAAFO, as we are always doing right now, at every moment.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Bold to assume that I use Windows at all... (except when 100% mandatory at my job)

Though as time goes on I wonder how long Mac OSX will take to become more like it, as iOS has already long ago jumped the shark.

OpenStars , 2 days ago

comic

-Link

OpenStars OP , 1 day ago

A lot of the more right-wing Republicans are gone now, whereas the ultra-right-wing ones that replaced them... are now also gone, and the new Alt-right ones seem to be paving the way for the next iteration, the Alt-Reich.:-(

But my point is that while there may have been some people of good conscience before (mind you I could not name any offhand, but theoretically), or at least true believers in their own dogma, nowadays you either bow before the Dump Trump or you get run over.

OpenStars OP , 1 day ago

Tbf the people living in rural areas - where they are surrounded by e.g. bears - probably really do have a (more) legit need for such weapons as handguns and even rifles (NOT ones that can kill 1000 people while barely needing to be reloaded though).

But people can't even talk with one another these days, much less work together for a supposedly common goal to protect the lives of actual children.

Elsewhere Jon Stewart has a brilliant interview with someone where he barely gets a nod to admit that voters need registration in order to vote, hence registration is not impinging upon that constitutional right.

OpenStars , 2 days ago

I have noticed that the titles of many articles, yes even at The Guardian that generally has good content once you get past that, are written to generate maximum clicks.

You were not ignored by accident. It was a calculated decision to maximize profits, in a manner that controls the conversation and leaves you out in the cold.

Fuck corporate greed:-(.

But for you, my fellow human being who isn't a hollowed-out shell i.e. CEO, I wish the absolute best outcome possible. (And me too.)

Maybe house prices will go down someday? I really am genuinely surprised at all that Biden('s administration) has managed to accomplish, but it was set back years before it even started by the pandemic, greedflation, and other economic and other forms of unrest. If we can get past this next election without a literal and actual bloody civil war... well then most of us will still die of climate change (gee, I am just full of positivity today aren't I? sadly, that is the most positive take possible on that one:-|), but we might be able to make some headway? e.g. start incentivizing building houses further away from city centers, which WFH should help make possible - and even if you want to live in a city, the decrease in demand should help lower prices?

Anyway, all we can do is what we can do (aka not everything is within our control), so don't stress too awfully much about it. We'll die - we can't change that - but hopefully we'll have some good days between now and then:-).

OpenStars , 2 days ago

The word "think" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there... plus how many conservative voters these days even have college degrees? The TV (or radio) man says to vote one way, so they do, end of the matter as far as they are concerned. (extraordinarily sadly, no /s on this one)

OpenStars , 2 days ago

Someone else could write news then? People started doing that on YouTube - e.g. CPG Grey, Ian Danskin/Innuendo Studios, Hank & John Green, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Kurzgesagt, etc. It did not work out well I think, especially since people seek more immediate gratification i.e. Twitch dances or whatever rather than fully college-level subject matter provided entirely for free, oh except having to watch ads for the corporate overlords.

If we do not value i.e. take care of things, we will lose them. In this case - and here I will use a generational term, b/c it refers to the only people in charge at the time it occurred - the Boomer (+ Great) generations chose this for the legacy of everyone who came after. Which is only the history of how we came to be here, but it is our choice to continue forward this way.

OpenStars , 2 days ago

Who could oppose that?

I think you know who... there is one class that seems to go FAR out of their way to control the conversation to the end of "there is no class struggle" (or even "there is no such thing as class"?).

OpenStars , 2 days ago

US education was abysmal before that already

Solid points all around, but I wanted to add one historical tidbit: at one point the USA had literally the best edumacashiun in the world. After WWII, the other nations (like the UK + those in the EU) were bombed all to hell & back whereas the USA was relatively fine. People like Bill Gates advocated strongly for US education funding, b/c it helped feed that behemoth giant of a corporation to have an already-educated workforce, funded by US tax dollars, that they could take advantage of.

We have fallen FAR down the world rankings since then. Tbf, some of that may reflect changes in measurements e.g. does "every" kid need one, or can some be excused to go be a farmhand without needing to finish? (this affects averaged measurements, but not peak ones, or the previously thus-filtered ones)

OpenStars , 2 days ago

Exactly ^this. It makes sense to them that they "worked their way through college", ignoring how that is no longer possible.

Tbh I'm not a fan of just handing out money to the predatory banks who screwed students over with those loans either, but damn we should do something. Like maybe educate ourselves on a topic prior to banning people from doing it, possibly, hopefully?

And then they go and say "that's not how democracy works", except when you win the majority so hard that you even overcome the electoral college effect then they simply overthrow democracy itself.:-(

There are indeed real facts, and real people, behind all those pithy sayings.

OpenStars , 2 days ago

I guess I spoke too quickly as well. Probably people do write the news, but (a) how do you even find things these days, when searching is crap; and (b) it would perhaps do little to counteract the mis- (neutral), even active dis-information that is out there now. Also those sources I mentioned tend to be rather high-end, e.g. of the scale of intelligence required to make use of and especially to really enjoy watching them.

Speaking of the Bush administration, I recall hearing about the event where they pulled down Sadam Hussein's statue (iirc?) but later when I watched it happen with my own eyes - with the audio ON mind you - it told a 100% different story. Crowds cheering, or booing, or something, but the important thing is that with the audio OFF they can say whatever they wish to, and we'd believe it b/c how else could we know the reality? Unless someone happened to have the original source... except even then, what if they swapped the audio out, how could we tell!?

The only real way to tell a counterfeit is to know the real thing so well that nobody can tell you otherwise. So what, I am supposed to know about the entire history of the Middle East, and all of the machinations of the US government within that!? I have a fucking job you know, and as a not-Boomer, may never see retirement or own a home even then - who has time to add all of that to their schedule, on top of every single other thing like climate change, ThE eCoNoMy ThO, Covid and/or vaccines, and all of the other myriad things out there (like gay frogs for some damn reason, I dunno)?!

Highly ironically then, the internet may have slowed down the pace of systemic and active disinformation - by providing an "alternate" source of real, true facts - even as in other ways it also sped it up (by providing a source of "alternative facts" that are not true).

And in response to all of that, the Democrats choose to nominate... HRC, smdh. Remember, Trump did not win, so much as she lost - worse than any candidate in modern history, and the second-worst btw was... him. Conservatives, liberals, voters, apathetic people - we brought this upon ourselves. I really hope that we get to live, but if we die, I cannot really blame anyone else? The wealthy elites, ahem excuse me, the Democrat politicians, don't really exist within the same world as 99.999999% of the rest of Americans, which might be fine except neither do they seem to bother even so much as learning about them - except, you know, enough to carry hot sauce in her purse I suppose.

What you are describing sounds an awful lot to me like the mantra of "move fast and break things", which as I understand it was popularized by Mark Zuckerberg of Facism FaceBook, and refers basically to the fact that we can move so quickly nowadays - with the abilities of code monkies hopped up on crack (one presumes, this on top of the Red Bull and Dorritos combo:-P) that even if we screw up, we can still move quickly enough to fix it. Now, you might say that even one second's thought would be enough to dispell that rumor, however my counter to that is... he's rich. (and!? WTF does that even have to do with anything!? oh wait, he took all that money from society regardless of the harm that it did to us all, okay then)

Anyway, there have always been the elites - the idea of the Illuminati, regardless of whether they are "really" real or not, like seriously, how could they not be, that's simply how the world works!? - who have controlled society. The problem is, the elites feel like they no longer need the backing of irl human beings, b/c of (a) globalism (so humans here don't need educating, if you can get sufficient number of coders somewhere, who are willing to work for bananas and cocaine), and (b) automation (so... do we really need human beings at all? and also climate change makes it unlikely that we'll all survive? welp, better start killing them off in mass numbers, or better yet just let them do it to themselves, whilst *I* simply accumulate all of the wealth that I possibly can until then).

We are all so damn naive - and yes I include myself first and foremost among that set.:-P I am not sure that this problem even is fixable, but if it were, it would take an amount of collective effort that... I am not certain exists any longer. Or the backing of an elite. I guess we'll see what happens. :-|

OpenStars , 18 hours ago

Their decision, whether they have spent even one second's thought about it or not, is "strategic" as in one that will get them personally some benefits, but it is also short-sighted as in one that may doom us all. On the other hand, my naivite is perhaps far worse so I should be careful throwing stones in glass houses.

I rarely like popular TV shows but one that does make me think is The 100 that illustrates thougher choices needing to be made and all the gamesmanship going on surrounding those. e.g. will neoliberals survive whereas progressivism was too impractical to ever have a chance? I don't know the answer but those seem like the kinds of questions that needed to be explored by people far smarter in such matters than I. Unfortunately, they instead have been explored by people who are fairly smart but whose defining characteristic may be a desire to become personally richer, which again far exceeds my own.

OpenStars , 17 hours ago (edited 17 hours ago)

Perhaps I am being unfair with my language, so here's an example if it helps clarify: this is a video combating vaccine disinformation campaigns. It is cute, slow paced enough, but also keeps moving fast enough, it aims low but at the same time it contains high levels of content, and basically answers anyone's questions about the situation. It is as perfect a video as I think can possibly exist - extremely bold words, but... accurate imho? Edit: oops, this is the one I meant, but notably the fact that there are multiple that fit this criteria also serves a different point as well!?:-)

However, instead of watching this, more people died in the USA from the pandemic than from all wars combined, and like so many other scenarios (e.g. gun violence) we will forever be ignorant of the true numbers because we are actively prevented from counting them.

This is literally, actually, full-on life vs. death, but people cannot be bothered to watch even so much as a 10-minute video to save their life, or the life of everyone around them including their entire family. And the nation that they claim to love and be patriotic for.

Knowledge can easily cure ignorance, but not much if anything can be done about obstinacy. Maybe if they suffer enough pain they may finally start to care enough to open up to listen a real answer, but brainwashing is so tough to attempt to break through.

That channel also deals with climate change, technology, etc. But to switch to a very different example, another one is the rise of fascism all around the world. Ian Danskin's Innuendo Studios has a playlist for his series on The Alt Right Playbook that is as comprehensive and deep a collection on that topic as I have ever seen. One example of the series is I hate Mondays and another is There's always a bigger fish. These in some ways are more important than knowledge about climate change or vaccines or gun control or whatever, bc it discusses what we as a society will do about those matters. But instead of watching such, and/or even reading the Constitution that they claim to love, people instead show up at the White House with the idea to literally behead people (January 6), and on the other side liberals always seem shocked, Shocked I tell you, SHOCKED!?! at the actions of conservatives, despite how remarkably consistent they are.

With so much free, virtually instant knowledge (okay so less than an hour?) available to us all, and with an ad blocker needs nothing at all in return but even without one having to watch a handful of ads is nothing in the grand scheme of things - with all that is available, I can only conclude that people do not want that knowledge. i.e. people in both sides - liberal and conservative - remain in their ignorance by choice, bc it's easier to watch something akin to a TikTok dance.

OpenStars , 16 hours ago

Farmers need education. Farmhands do not.

Anyway I was just attempting to use it as an example - we could substitute gas station attendant or fast food worker, etc. There are jobs where, for the job anyway while ignoring the quality of life for the actual person, formalized education is less necessary than for other jobs, e.g. doctor or lawyer.

But my example of using farmhand was not made up: farmers literally pulled their kids out of primary schooling in order to make use of them on the farm. Perhaps they supplemented it with homeschooling at other times when the crop cycles allowed... or perhaps not. But either way, the ways we use to measure intelligence - e.g. if we ask what country does the city of Athens belong to - the farmhands will appear extremely low in such rankings.

So long as someone else in the family does the planning work, someone who was not merely pulled out but who flunked out of primary schooling could exist in life by contributing purely manual but not much intellectual labor.

OpenStars , 15 hours ago

Then you understand correctly.

The difference is, people like Bezos also want to steal the value of our labor, but without allowing us to educate our children.

Hence it is worse.

OpenStars , 15 hours ago

Yes the purpose of Kurzgesagt is pop-sci. Hank and John Green are more college level (remember: American college is often equivalent to high school elsewhere in the world) and the likes of Innuendo Studios and CGP Grey can get fairly far away from dancing and deeper into philosophy.

The reason I brought up Kurzgesagt was that even that level is beyond what people want to see.

OpenStars , 11 hours ago

First note that it's enormously variable, with some college preparatory high schools being better than some colleges. The main thing is that education is a for-profit exercise, and now even government-funded ones behave like that too after No Child Left Behind. So like anything else, it's whatever they can get away with selling their product with minimal input into in order to maximize the margin:-(.

Then above and beyond that, schools are partly paid for by the government, but also by the local district they are in, so schools in richer areas are going to be 1000x better than those in poorer ones. See e.g. this older John Oliver (Last Week Tonight) special: https://youtu.be/o8yiYCHMAlM.

OpenStars , 10 hours ago

If you will allow me to say? Your premise seems incorrect. Words like "need" presumes a goal to keep people alive. We "need" Oxygen, in order to breathe which itself is necessary in order to stay alive rather than convert into a corpse state of 'existence'. However, as e.g. https://lemmy.zip/post/17644464 shows, we are not being allowed to have even that. And if even Oxygen is denied us, then surely education will be even less of a "right", for homo sapiens or otherwise.

To a fascist, such as the current set of billionaires in charge, education of the masses - or even our very existence, in light of globalism for now and automation eventually - is no longer necessary. And with climate change diminishing resources, possibly it is not even desirable or neutral anymore, so much as something to be either neutrally or perhaps actively pursued to demolish what has previously been built up. e.g. when the pandemic occurred, the response was "so what? let them die. BuT tHe EcOnOmY will go on just fine without them, in fact better without those restrictions imposed by safety protocols".

So no, "everyone needs education" sounds like something that is not true... at least according to the likes of Elon Musk, who now controls Twitter. Not Bezos, nor Zuckerberg, etc. And they would really like it if we did not tax them in order to pay for such. And a LOT of people seem to agree with them, whether we like it or not. See this fantastic description of it: https://youtu.be/agzNANfNlTs?si=dAGHoctLiPimmTTQ.

OpenStars , 8 hours ago

It's okay - that's how I interpreted it:-). Lemmy formatting can also be weird sometimes and people access via different methods, so I try to remember that as well.

citizens of their own country

^This is the big one, particularly in a democracy this is so extremely crucial. But... we did not bother to secure it, so now we may be (are?) losing it all. Like someone who has lost their immune system, we are now vulnerable to not only lack of knowledge but outright presence of active disinformation. Wait... didn't we need that - ooopsie daisy!? :-P

I am afraid of my country becoming like this.

If we had had more fear sooner, we might have avoided getting eaten alive by Russian disinformation campaigns. As it is... our lack of fear has definitely harmed us greatly, possibly fatally.

The good news is that whatever society rises out of our corpse will have learned lessons from the ordeal. Rome also fell too, but life goes on. Ours might not, and given climate change humans or even mammals + far more might not, but even so, all we can control is ourselves individually, right now. I for one take that as a charge to do whatever I can in however much time we have left. And maybe it's not a foregone conclusion after all? So much the better. All we have is today - make it a good one.:-)

OpenStars , 1 day ago

I dunno, that sounds like something that has "molecules" in it?

Instead, just say that it has what plants crave? :-P

img

OpenStars , 1 day ago

I for one hope that he goes back to what he seemed to enjoy the most: writing the code. Let someone else handle the admin duties, which he mostly abandoned anyway. We would get the non-Lemmy codebase enhanced, while he would get the fun of chasing his passion:-).

OpenStars , 2 days ago

I want to go there!!! It makes me wonder if there is a Star Wars one... (meh, close enough).

OpenStars , 1 day ago

Nooooo! Now this just makes me want a 30-Rock version so much more keenly:-P.

OpenStars , 1 day ago

The donation link is above all of the social media (Facebook, Twitter/X, etc.) ones so the focus seems on bringing in money rather than raising awareness.

Nations used to have functioning government systems that would fund this stuff - not just in children but in adults too. But right-wing parties seem in control of everything lately, thus such children that provide less tangible benefits to society will get triaged in terms of available funding.