• Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    Related to the current election, that OG conservatives, or Reagan and Bush conservatives (referring to George H. W. Bush) are the same thing as MAGA conservatives.

    The difference is, the old guard blithely preserved the kind of policies that shredded social safety nets and business regulations in favor of tax cuts, leading to precarity and the rise of paranoia that led to the Trump takeover in 2015.

    The OGs just wish they had another mile or two of altitude to plummet, and are freaked out about the ground looming so close and rushing so fast. But they will still keep the same policies, and will still lay a ground of Ayn Randian, Reagan-worshiping Mitt Romney / Jeb Bush / Ted Cruz candidates until some other charismatic narcissist Mussolini-wanabe rushes in and plucks the whole party from their hands again. And they’ll get all butt-smoochy with the new guy like Lindsey Graham did with Trump (after predicting how this loose cannon will end the Republican party).

    They didn’t just buy the ticket to ride. They bought stocks in the railroad line, and insisted that fascism-backed one-party autocracy was the destination. They knew it since Reagan. By George W. Bush it was showing serious signs even before the PATRIOT act.

    So when people freak out today because we’re on the brink of losing our democracy, I have to wonder where they’ve been the last two decades. How is it after George W. Bush, and torture and Iraq and the pig lagoons and Abstinence-Only sex ed, did you think another Republican president was a good thing? I know Clinton was scary, but did you take even one look at Trump?

  • ZeroGravitas@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Hours spent working is not the same as productivity.

    Twice as many people assigned to a project does not double productivity either.

    I could go on…

  • 01101000_01101001@mander.xyz
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    5 months ago

    When you’re done with the microwave and took your food out early to avoid the alarm, clear the fucking time that’s remaining.

  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    How corporations use advertisements to influence how the media reports on their activities. Prime example is how BP ran all those “We’re Sorry” ads when they poisoned the Gulf of Mexico. They weren’t apologizing to the public. They were using the ads to pass bribes to the news agencies to make sure to give them soft coverage when they should have been ranking them over the coals.

  • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Conspiracies that require absolute lock tight secrecy to function at a basic level aren’t generally tenable to be sustained for longer than a handful of years at a time at most. Somebody always fucks up or basically was just lucky nobody checked for awhile. The nessesity of any large scale collaboration creates inefficiencies and potential error points in the system. Even the best of the best spy agencies fuck up and get caught rather routinely, particularly when operating on their home soil. A lot of investigative journalists accidentally trip over stuff all the time but have good faith arrangements (or in some places laws) to not disclose the active manoeuvres of the state to the public.

    It’s just really hard for humans in general to accept that events that effected them or things they care about very deeply personally weren’t somehow also grand in design. Grocking sometimes it really is just random chance or stupid mishandling is not something we’re well wired to handle. Stories of all powerful conspiracies masterminding the world scratch that itch… But logistically speaking the conspiracy aspect is completely unnecessary. If someone is trying to blame a nebulous bogeymen who exists as nameless, numberless ultimately wealthy but also totally off the books super spies… chances are they are just trying to capitalize on making you feel flattered, smart and empowered by something “only you are smart enough to believe” - while feeding you bullshit they can personally profit from in some way with you none the wiser.

  • duffman@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The pursuit of “equity” is a tribalistic and often racist effort that rebuilds and reinforces the systemic racism we’ve been trying to dismantle for decades.

  • nieceandtows@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    That if you are not paying for a product, you are the product. If a product you love is free, and/or you use it because it’s free, think of what you are paying for it with.

    • LockheedTheDragon@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Even if you are paying for a product, you may be another income stream. You pay for a smart watch/home assistant/email/VPN and they use your data. Not all but enough people need to be aware of. Sadly It’s pretty much now deciding on who gets your data. Or trusting that they really are not taking your data, trust them, they say they are not!

  • fireweed@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Perpetual growth in a finite system is impossible, and anything that relies on perpetual growth to function is doomed to eventually fail.

    For instance: social services that rely on perpetual population growth (especially youth population; e.g. Japan/South Korea), companies that rely on perpetual increase in users (most publicly-owned companies; e g. basically every social media company ATM), industries that rely on perpetual advancements in technology (e.g. industrialized agriculture, which constantly needs new ways to fight self-induced problems like soil depletion and erosion), housing as wealth generation (to be a wealth generator it has to outpace inflation, but at a certain point no one will be able to afford to purchase houses at their inflated prices no matter how over-leveraged they get; e.g. Canada). [Note that these are merely examples where these issues are currently coming to a head; they are by no means special cases, they’re just in a more advanced state of “finding out.”]

    In other words, a lot of the modern world, in both public and private sectors, is built around a series of ponzi schemes.

  • Beaver@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    That a whole foods plant-based diet is healthier and better the environment and yet people do their utmost to refuse to learn more about it.

    • TehBamski@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It’s not so much that people don’t want to learn about it. It’s more so that they don’t want to be told/believe. Another factor IMO, is that they can’t understand it, so they won’t believe it. And you can’t force people to understand something. It takes time. Think back to your days in school. Think about your favorite teacher. How did they teach you about something you had no idea about? Did they start to become unglued when you didn’t understand what they were talking about? Did they tell you to just believe it because it’s true?