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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • The reason I singled out leftists is that over the last couple decades, in the ideological struggle between socialists and capitalists… the capitalists pretty much won. There are are still some holdouts around the world but in general leftists are left on the outside looking in as the capitalist-led world grows more prosperous (and lots of bad things too, I’m not trying to play it off as capitalist good socialist bad). But in their position, all leftists can really do is criticize the status quo. And, again, there are plenty of valid criticisms to make, but because they are removed from power leftists can’t do very much “look at the good things socialism is doing,” it’s 99% “look at all the bad things capitalism is doing”. At least in the US/Western Europe.

    The right-wing can at least say things like “the economy is doing well” and “technology is advancing due to [Company]'s breakthrough” in between fear-mongering about immigration.


  • Reading through all the other doomposts I felt obligated to share my view.

    I read national/international news every day, and I’m still optimistic about humanity’s future.

    First off, I don’t bother with local news at all. That really is just a cesspool of crime reporting. My dad summarized local news pretty well: “someone was murdered today, and heres some footage of blood on the pavement.”

    As far as national and international news goes, I read it because I think it’s interesting and it’s good to stay informed, but you can’t use it as a barometer for how the world’s doing, because news is just inherently negative. It doesn’t mean the world is actually doing bad!

    Which of the following do you think would get reported as a headline?

    “Indonesia enjoys another year without a tsunami”

    “Thousand killed as tsunami ravages Indonesian coast”

    “Global poverty rate continues slow, steady decline”

    “Millions at risk of starvation as African crops fail”

    “Good news, no new deadly infectious diseases this year”

    “Scientists raise alarm over spread of bird flu”

    I think maybe it’s helpful to think of the news not as objective reporting on the state of the world but rather like a police blotter that just logs bad things that have happened. And I think it’s perfectly fine to tune it out and just live your life. If you’re interested in a particular issue, like homelessness or an election maybe look at a less sensational information source like Wikipedia or something.

    Also, just a little mini-rant: the two types of people who are most negative about the state of the world are religious missionaries and leftists. Because in order to convince you that the world needs a savior they have to convince you that we aren’t on a path to do it ourselves. So, maybe steer clear of news on Lemmy as well haha














  • I think the difference is that there is not really a Netflix-without-the-ads alternative for the same price. And if you are willing to pay a bit more, well, you can just pay for the higher tier of Netflix without ads.

    With browsers on the other hand, it’s all free with virtually no barrier to switching. So I think people will defect away a lot more quickly when a browser starts to worsen in quality (especially since Chrome doesn’t have Daddy Microsoft to force users to use it by default)



  • Because bystanders were not deliberately targeted by the pager attack. They were collateral. If I launch 20 rockets at a military base and a couple of them go astray and several civilians are killed, that is not a terrorist attack, even if I was aware of the possibility of that happening. Should I have been more careful? Maybe, but that is a different discussion. If I launch those rockets at a marketplace with the intention of killing/terrorizing civilians, that would be a terrorist attack. And that is the difference between the pager attack and Oct 7: intent.