psivchaz

@psivchaz@reddthat.com

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psivchaz ,

We all know that the hate for Mexico is nonsense. They aren't coming over the border and stealing highly coveted jobs. The jobs that have actually been taken by immigrants are largely middle class jobs that require degrees, things like IT and medicine.

In part, this has been fine. It drives the salaries down a bit because they're willing to accept less to move to the country and even the lower salary is still much more than they would make at home. Companies win because there weren't enough qualified people to go around for a while, so immigration closes the gaps.

This is pure conservatism though. Allow foreigners to come study here in unlimited numbers, then let them stay to take middle class jobs at lower salaries in these non-union industries. It's like outsourcing but everyone is in the same time zone and they won't resist your return-to-office mandate.

psivchaz ,

I agree but I do sympathize with one part of it. Things that were widely considered funny a few years ago are not today. I do think it's unfair to hold people in the past to the standards of today, but people love digging up old footage and bludgeoning people with it.

If a comic makes a joke and it bombs, maybe it's not funny. Maybe they used it with the wrong audience. Reading the culture and the room and choosing wisely is part of the job, like you say. But if it bombs 5 years later on Twitter, maybe it should have just been left in the past with the context it belonged in and not dug up and resurrected for clicks.

psivchaz ,

I'm not saying, "Hey, it's fine" I'm saying that people and cultures change, and should be allowed to change. Never before have people been so unable to escape their past. Yeah, occasionally you get a Bernie Sanders who seems to nail it right off. But most people have some skeletons or some shit they'd be embarrassed about if it were dug up and went viral.

When you dig up the past and hit people with it, you discourage progress. People are more likely to dig in their heels, knowing that the opinions they have today they'll have to answer for tomorrow.

psivchaz ,

This has to be terrible news for conspiracy theorists. Our government got caught doing something shady overseas but it was encouraging other people to NOT vaccinate, which is the thing the conspiracy theorists thought our government wanted everyone to do.

I'm legitimately interested to see how/if Fox or OAN report on this. It should be entertaining.

psivchaz ,

Because they focus on curb appeal. Their phones and TVs and appliances look pretty in the store so people buy them. It's not til you get them home that you begin to notice that they are trash. The next problem is that people may not even realize that the competition is better. If you buy a Samsung device knowing only that it looks good in the store, you probably aren't the type to research, so you think that's just how it is: Modern phones have weird confusing UIs, modern TVs have weird menu lag and ads, modern appliances just don't last the way they used to.

psivchaz ,

Bad people with bad public policy ideas are the people most willing to use violence. Until everyday people feel as if there's no other choice, it will always be our craziest and our worst that go around shooting people. I mean, look at who has actually been assassinated or attacked in US political history, mostly people trying to make positive changes.

psivchaz ,

I think where points of view tend to diverge is in the definition of "harm." There's also some team sports at play, for sure, but I do think a big part of it is "harm."

See, a devout Christian might say that an atheist T-shirt encourages children to turn away from God, endangering their immortal souls. If you truly believe in Christianity, can there be any greater harm?

At the same time, people who are more conservative tend to not view psychological effects as valid. If you do something that causes a person mental anguish, as opposed to damaging their body, property, or potentially their immortal soul, then it's imaginary harm. To be totally honest, though, that's one area I tend to be almost conservative. Psychological harm IS real harm, but I don't think the government should be in the business of protecting people from it because as long as people have differing views there's simply no way to protect people equally.

SUVs made up 20% of global emissions growth and 55% of car sales globally in 2023 ( slrpnk.net )

This is just insane. Not only are cars themself mostly unnecessary, if the right infrastructure is provided, but SUVs also use more resources to run and be produced then small cars, without any advantage over them. So an obvious waste, which could easily be cut to reduce emissions....

psivchaz ,

This is such a difficult thing to do. Replaced baggies with reusable silicone. Use only glass or ceramic dishes. Use reusable bags at the grocery store. Got little reusable fruit and vegetable bags so I'm not using the disposable bags at the grocery.

But at the end of the day, goddamn every food or product I buy comes wrapped in plastic one way or the other, and there's little I can do about that.

psivchaz ,

That's how deep the conspiracy goes. These damn climate scientists are somehow changing the climate to prove themselves right!

psivchaz ,

I'm so sorry.

psivchaz ,

Alas, my state does not allow 48th trimester abortions.

psivchaz ,

Sometimes, people think they're helping. They had a good experience so they say, "They even went so far as to do x" thinking management gives a shit and will think, "Oh my God what a great employee! We must promote them at once!"

People who have never worked in the service industry, or haven't for a few decades, genuinely seem to think that customer service is a real thing that companies care about, rather than something they will pay lip service to as long as it extracts more revenue.

psivchaz ,

Induction suffers a lot from a "people are really silly" problem. Every time I talk about how great it is, how much I love my induction stove, the person I'm talking to goes "BUT YOU HAVE TO BUY SPECIFIC POTS THO." As if it uses some rare special pot and you have to go out of your way for it, when the reality is that everything I owned and probably everything they owned works just fine.

psivchaz ,

I'm not a sociologist, and probably there is someone who knows what they're talking about who has done actual research and maybe written an actual paper I just haven't seen. But I have this theory that humans need some level of discomfort.

In part, I think the brain gets stronger when challenged. It needs practical challenges, not just artificial challenges. And in part, I think that suffering is relative. Those people who freak out about getting the wrong color iPhone? It's literally the worst thing that's ever happened to them, and they have no coping skills.

All that to say... We're definitely fucking ourselves up by trying to make things TOO safe and comfortable.

psivchaz ,

This is a thing in some scouting programs, and I hear it's a pretty common thing in the Netherlands to drop teens in the woods and let them figure their way back.

psivchaz ,

It's so difficult to try and have this nuanced take with people. I'm NOT trivializing or saying you should "just suck it up " I'm suggesting that you treat mental illness like an illness: Seek treatment, follow professional advice, and be honest with yourself and the professionals you're seeing. If I broke my leg, but refused to get a cast because I felt it was really a problem with my arm, while lying to every doctor I meet about what happened, people would get very sick of my nonsense in short order.

psivchaz ,

I have a similar one! I did house calls. I got called out on a warranty call, someone said a coworker of mine didn't fix the problem. I look in the notes and the coworker says he did a standard virus removal, suggested virus protection but was turned down.

I get there and sure enough it's riddled with viruses again. Coworker was legit, notes all in order, I tell the client that this isn't a warranty issue, the work was done, and it has now been reinfected and will need another removal. He seems fine with this, but his wife flips out and demands I prove it got reinfected.

I suggest that we can check the web history. Since it was popping up ads, we'd see when the pop-ups started, and more importantly we'd see if they had stopped after coworker left. Guy says that's unnecessary, it definitely got reinfected, and this time he'll buy an antivirus. Wife is having none of it, says go ahead and check and I'll see the problem was never fixed. I ask if they're sure, guy kind of resignedly says to do it.

I'm not one to kink shame, but when all the trans porn site titles came up, the dude was clearly mortified. I didn't get very far into trying to figure out if I can prove it's related before the wife says "just fix the damn thing" and stormed out. I hope it wasn't too bad for him, she seemed a bit difficult to deal with.

psivchaz ,

There's some inherent risk in the ad blocker as well, though. If it's an extension, you're trusting that this thing you installed, that can read and modify every website you visit, isn't going to do anything sneaky. Yes, maybe it's open source, but every once in a while something sneaks into open source projects, too. It will get caught, but it could be after the damage is done.

I mean, I use an ad blocker. But I don't think it's unreasonable to value security and not use one.

psivchaz ,

To be fair, I bet some percentage of those that don't use an ad blocker ARE using something like no script and just don't need one as a result.

psivchaz ,

And that's becoming it's own problem with search, especially with technical questions. The good answer is also old and out of date.

psivchaz ,

I think the fear isn't that everyone of the preferred gender wants to bone your partner, but that you have no way of knowing which ones do. The uncertainty is what I think gets to a lot of people.

Still, it's silly. If one of the core values of your relationship is that you're exclusive, it's up to you and your partner to honor that, not up to every other person who comes along. If your partner won't respect that if a friend offers, then they don't respect the relationship to begin with and you're better off finding out.

At least, that's my take from listening to other people. I'm not a sociologist or anything.

psivchaz ,

I just switched my gaming PC to Linux yesterday. Well, switch is strong, I still have Windows in case I need to go back.

It's come a long way, though. I started using Linux desktop around 2000, and it was not a fun experience. I tried again in 2019 with a System76 laptop, and it's been just fine. My home theater/gaming PC was the last holdout.

So far, it works great. Steam Link works, my games all seem to work, RetroArch is going strong. The only downside is Oculus support doesn't seem to exist at all, so I might need to keep my Windows drive a bit longer just for VR.

psivchaz ,

The true mildly infuriating is the comments. Whether this is rage bait or not, we should all be about to agree on some basic things:

  • Domestic violence sucks regardless of who the victim is and who the perpetrator is.

  • Helping one group of victims, like males, does not have to and should not take away from helping another group.

  • The number of victims should not be the deciding factor on whether victims deserve empathy and support.

People in here are going out of their way to defend what is clearly a biased oversight, treating women like an automatic victim and treating men like an automatic perpetrator. Why? Just acknowledge that it's dumb, shows bias, and move on.

psivchaz ,

Since they're underage, the mother would have the authority to make medical decisions on their behalf. If she decides that they wouldn't want to be kept alive by machines like an industrial freezer, surely that's her choice, right?

I'm not a lawyer but I'd love to see how something like this pans out. It feels like another one of those situations where an idiot makes a sweeping ruling that doesn't consider the many many ways it affects society.

psivchaz ,

This list is missing hookers and cocaine.

psivchaz ,

Of these, I'd like to point out that unironically Uber is the obvious choice for Best. Hear me out...

  • Outside of the really big cities, taxi service was trash. You had to find a number and a phone, the price was almost impossible to figure out in advance, and none that I am aware of were doing anything to keep up with the times or improve anything. The competition that it hurt deserved some pain.

  • People can now paw drunkenly at their phone and generally arrive home safe. Easy access to rides has almost certainly saved lives. I don't think you can say that about any of the others on the list.

But wait! I'm not saying that Uber is good. I'm just saying that, theoretically, you could start a service like Uber that isn't hot garbage, that has employees or at least better paid contractors that take home a more reasonable share of the money. Hell, a local government could create a ride hailing app that passes the entire amount back to the driver, and it would be a net benefit to society. Though at that point, maybe they should have just been looking into better public transportation and planning instead.

psivchaz ,

GDP is 23.32 trillion. Population is 331.9 million. If the GDP were literally split evenly among every single person including children, it's about $70k annually. My guess is that they were doing this and flubbed the math.

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