Stovetop

From the community rules:

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts - This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.

I know this is a bit of a meme, but there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism. It’s entirely a question of where you choose to draw the line.

This applies to a lot of causes/principles I care about, but to illustrate with my stance on LGBT issues:

• If a company openly donates directly to anti-LGBT causes? I’d boycott them, no further questions needed.

• If a high ranking member of a company donates to anti-LGBT causes using their own (likely unethically obtained) funds? I’d boycott for sure unless their product/service is an absolute necessity.

• If a company is headquartered in a state/country that is anti-LGBT? I would definitely boycott as long as there is a suitable alternative.

• If a company pays/employs people who are anti-LGBT? Gosh, well, that’s probably most companies. Is it possible to account for how every individual employee/beneficiary chooses to spend the money they make for their work? I have no capacity to make choices at this point.

Those are my lines.

When I shop at the supermarket, I have to accept that there are likely people working there somewhere with horrible beliefs whose income is financially supported by my patronage. When I buy clothing, I have to accept that there are probably products I’ve purchased that are made through exploitative labor practices. When it is within my means to spend capital more ethically, I will. But it is absolutely not possible for me to ensure that every dollar I spend goes to a worthwhile cause or to someone who deserves it.

The Good Place really illustrated this point well in the later episodes. In the modern world where everything is so much more interconnected than ever before, we need to redefine traditional ethics to better consider what is practical for normal people. And the worse your circumstances are, the harder it is to have that luxury of choice.

Mali*, not Malaysia. Malaysia’s TLD is .my

Give me the outcome of The Good Place as well where you can choose oblivion after there’s nothing left to do.

San Junipero was one of the few “happy” episodes of Black Mirror but it didn’t ask the question of “where are we in 10,000 years?” like The Good Place considered.

Lemmy.ml then, a lot of overlap.

Literally so did the Nazis.

Yes, and they’re pronounced the same in the US.

Kilometer has the same stressed syllable as odometer in American English.

Easier just to distinguish pronunciation as -ometer vs -meter.

Obligatory IANAL, but…

Generally a search warrant needs to be issued by a local authority, and that requires the crime to be prosecutable in the place where it was issued.

So in theory, California is potentially able to refuse requests to search for things that are not illegal in California but may be illegal somewhere else.

That being said, it looks like there are specific practices in place making it easier to issue warrants for electronic data like this scenario, even across state lines.

And in this particular circumstance, the alleged offense is even illegal in California (abortion of a viable fetus), so it’s a bit of a moot point anyways. A Californian judge would have issued this warrant if a local police department requested one.

If that’s how you choose to read into my comment, there’s no helping you.

Why would you even assume I’m white? Do you think I just moved to China on a whim? All Chinese people have to be born in China and nowhere else?

Fuck this.

You’re right. A lot of people in China would probably disagree with me. But a lot of people in China lack the basic critical thinking skills to even question their circumstances, because secondary schools (if you even have the means to attend one) don’t like students who ask too many questions.

A lot of people in the US would also disagree with me politically, because they think they were chosen by Jesus to oppress brown people and spread glorious capitalism around the world. But that doesn’t make them right either.

I am a Marxist. I’ve done my homework. What do you want me to do, start quoting Zizek or Gramsci to pass your shitty litmus test?

China is an experiment in socialism gone awry, because like the rest of the world, those with power lust over capital. I lived in a T3 city in China where things were relatively quiet, but flew out to visit a friend way down in Shenzhen periodically. It’s hard to see billionaire kids racing their Ferraris down the street there while the poor masses look down from the windows of their destitute coffin house apartments and think that this is somehow a socialist success story.

China is as capital-driven as any other world power. The government just likes to participate in it a bit more directly.

But sure, you’re the expert, not me, so I’m sure this is all just capitalist propaganda intended to denounce great Mao zhuxi and sabotage the workers’ revolution.

My man, I lived in China. You don’t have to sell me this bullshit.

I’m going to level with you, I don’t have time to watch an hour long video for a topic that is likely just government-approved talking points.

In practice, I just don’t see any difference in the way the mega rich in China control society, just as they do in the rest of the western world. There is too much aesthetic reverence for the West in the upper eschelons of Chinese society.

It is just as dystopic as the West with the way workers are used as fodder by megacorps with no regard for their well-being. Any country with such widespread income inequality cannot call itself a socialist success story.

China is a terrible example of a socialist economy, and the others are still mired by poverty. One could claim that is due to capitalist sabotage, but I don’t think it does socialism any favors to use them as success stories.

Facebook/Instagram (Meta) is one I am not sure how to get a read on. They are branching out a lot, but I have no idea what they’re doing to remain profitable. It seems like they’re in “Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” mode, hoping that they find a new niche before their sizable warchest from the 2010’s runs dry.

They severely downsized once this year already and I have a feeling that won’t be the end of the story. Wouldn’t surprise me if they sell off/shut down Oculus in the near future.

Tiktok, meanwhile…well it’s already undergoing enshittification (it is the subject of that original essay) and old people are starting to use it, so I feel like it’s only a matter of time before it’s no longer cool with kids and they lose a sizable chunk of their revenue stream and content.

To sum up, Dessalines believes that a genocide is not taking place against the Uyghur people by the Chinese government.

That’s basically one of the common concerns I see, just kind of in addition to the general tankie vibes that are shared by many in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad which are sympathetic to communist regimes that have committed atrocities.

A feature similar to RES, maybe one that pulls from your subscriptions, would be nice. Start typing the name of a community and it suggests some autofill options formatted in a way that folks from other instances can click on it easily.

Just to add onto this good answer, you are really only expected to tip for sit-down restaurants with service and bars.

For takeout, cafes, fast food, etc., you don’t need to tip. A lot of places these have payment machines that just ask if you want to tip by default. You can safely hit “No tip” on these if you don’t want to.

Ostensibly it’s just to replace the tip jar for those who don’t use cash, but the prompt appearing every time you pay by card has convinced a lot of people that tipping is what you’re supposed to do in those situations, when in reality you have no obligation to.

Probably close to 20 years ago at this point, when visiting the official forums for a game I loved, my computer was infected by malware delivered by a malicious ad. This was not some seedy part of the internet, but a website hosted by a major game publisher whose product I enjoyed.

Try as I might, I could not revert the damage caused by the virus, so the only recourse I had was to just blank slate wipe it clean and start over.

Today, I acknowledge that most websites more tightly control the ads they host, but the trust is forever broken. As soon as the option became available to me, I installed the best adblocker I could find and never looked back. No exceptions.

The truth is that every ad is malicious, to small degrees. They want to commodify your eyeballs and take up space in your mind. They’re trying to create a need where one does not exist, and will use whatever tactic they can to try to part you from your hard-earned money. They’re a barrier between you and the content you want to enjoy—in many cases content that you paid to enjoy.

Even if it’s in the name of supporting a website/service I enjoy, I can’t confidently turn off my ad blocker anymore. It only takes one malicious ad to sneak through the cracks to cause disaster.

There has got to be a better way of running an online business without having to completely fill the space with ads.

Ordinarily I would disagree, assuming that they must be privvy to data that no one else is and are making carefully calculated decisions.

But with the way that Reddit leadership just continued to make misstep after misstep throughout this whole debacle, when all they had to do was just say/do nothing and wait for everything to blow over, I can only assume their corporate strategy right now is 100% improvised and not calculated.

Almost all subreddits signed up for just a 2-day protests and were going to return to normal after that. It was only because of how Reddit/spez acted in the wake of all this that they’re experiencing the resistance they are now.