Grumble4681's recent activity
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Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games
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Comment on Seattle’s law mandating higher pay for food delivery workers is a case study in backfire economics in ~finance
Grumble4681 LinkI don't really see anything wrong with this. Demand decreased because prices increased. Prices increased to pay people performing that job in that area a living wage. Yes that means that there...I don't really see anything wrong with this. Demand decreased because prices increased. Prices increased to pay people performing that job in that area a living wage. Yes that means that there will be a number of drivers that can't keep it as a job anymore because demand decreased. In theory the ones that remain will get paid better, though we'd have to wait to see how it develops to know if it actually works out that way.
Personally I find that some of the food delivery services had started out so low and with various introductory offers that it misrepresents the real cost of that service and it's not generally economical for most people to actually be using very often. There are certainly some people who can take advantage of it and the economics of it work due to their different circumstances, but for the average it's literally paying someone to drive around for you. It's the same with Uber and Lyft in terms of operating like taxis, they started out with these super low costs and made taxis seem overpriced and outdated (which to an extent they probably were in some areas at least), but now the prices for those services are way higher than they used to be and the drivers still rely on tips. I mean it's nice in a way that it's more of a unified taxi system with an app that makes it easy to engage with the service, but again it's not really economical for the average person to be using this frequently.
The difference I find with these services especially is the labor/time involved with driving, you can't really speed it up much. The traffic is an external factor to the business. You can pay someone to make you food and it be somewhat economical (though obviously we can recognize that many food service workers aren't paid that much) but you can also streamline the process of making food to minimize labor required per customer. How are you going to streamline delivering someone's Taco Bell order? Of course if you have a large enough service network with enough demand you can potentially localize order delivery better so there's less overall driving, but paying someone to drive you or your food for ~20-30 minutes of their time is not a cost you can really reduce without reducing that person's wage substantially since you can't reduce the time it takes them to complete the task. There's just no way this service can operate on a scale like package delivery from UPS or such plus food delivery is more time sensitive than ordering other random stuff and having it delivered. So you're not just paying someone to deliver whenever it's logistically optimized, you're paying someone to deliver it sooner rather than later. There's a cost to that on-demand type of service in addition to the basic labor costs of someone's time.
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Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes
Grumble4681 LinkMy understanding is that the type of moderation you're talking about is only done by Deimos. The elevated privileges that some users have stops short of being able to lock/delete posts or take...My understanding is that the type of moderation you're talking about is only done by Deimos. The elevated privileges that some users have stops short of being able to lock/delete posts or take action against users, and that means Deimos is the only person taking those actions. On occasion I've seen him post a reason, but on more occasions I think I've not seen a reason posted and generally he has stated this is due to being busy. Given that some moderation events are more time-sensitive and he can't necessarily just check the site every 24 hours when he's on a lunch break or something, I think that means he ends up doing some moderation when he has less time or focus that should (in my opinion) be afforded for the moderation task since he's the only one that can do it.
I've not been here as long as you have been but from everything I've seen, this site isn't changing for better and for worse because it lacks the funds to sustain itself and Deimos supports it financially and thus has his reasons to maintain control of its operation and of course he started it so if I were in his shoes I'd probably be less inclined to just freely hand it over to anyone else hoping that they would somehow be able to grow it and hope to not have it fall into even worse of a state than having some moderation challenges as it is now.
I also don't think Deimos is browsing regularly like you might think an active mod on Reddit or some other forum might do, so when he takes action on something it isn't as though he just personally took it upon himself to take action, most likely there were "malice" labels applied which basically notifies Deimos to take a look. There's no transparency on this either and probably for good reason but I suspect there are some users here who semi abuse malice labels knowing that Deimos is the only moderator and doesn't always have time to take a more active hand in moderation and is potentially more likely to lock a topic that might appear troublesome than to try to more actively keep up with moderation on the topic. Of course that isn't always the case, there's some where he has just deleted threads within a topic and not locked the whole topic, but it's not hard from an observation standpoint to recognize that it's easy to shut down conversations by using malice labels at anything that can be considered remotely insensitive. But that's purely speculation on my part because again, it's not like there's any real data for us to go on.
In the end, I think the site is in a bit of a feedback loop because without it being something that could sustain itself in terms of financially supporting those working for it, then it has less reason to have that work done, and without that work done there's less chance of there ever being any way for consistent financial support. I mean realistically we've seen many sites struggle to find ways to bring in money, advertising has its flaws, subscriptions have their flaws (substantial loss of users being a big one), donations are unreliable and often inconsequential to the amount that is needed.
For some of us that may have a Plex server or the like where we share this with family/friends etc. I think we might also recognize the burden in providing a service that doesn't pay for itself and in some cases can be a burden in terms of support. I personally established that tone with people I set up where it's a take it or leave it type of situation, you get what you get, if something is wrong let me know and I'll try to fix it when I can but no guarantees. I intentionally never requested money from anyone because I don't want the obligation. I of course can't speak for Deimos or how he feels about the site but it's easy for me to imagine how someone could view the site in terms of the amount of effort you can put into something that isn't a job you're paid to deal with.
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Comment on Florida is the first state to ban lab grown meat - Ron DeSantis in ~food
Grumble4681 Link ParentMy understanding of what you are saying seems to be rooted in the idea that this is a new development and religions existed prior to it, so religions wouldn't be impacted by something that never...My understanding of what you are saying seems to be rooted in the idea that this is a new development and religions existed prior to it, so religions wouldn't be impacted by something that never existed before them as there wouldn't be religious practices or beliefs surrounding something that didn't exist until recently. In theory though, can't religious practices and beliefs evolve or adapt over time? Can't new religions develop? So maybe current established religions as are practiced now aren't inherently impacted by this, but couldn't they be impacted by it? If you say that the only religions are the ones that came from thousands of years ago and they are static and don't change, then that would seemingly align with your argument, but that understanding of religion would seem to be flawed to me.
Aren't there people going to be born after this lab-grown meat does come to fruition that didn't necessarily grow up their whole lives eating other things? Granted if they're born in a place where it's banned then they wouldn't, but if they're born in a place where it wasn't and moved to a place where it was, then that line of reasoning doesn't seem to work anymore. Yeah that's 20+ years down the road, but conceptually that still breaks the reasoning.
I'm not a religious person and wasn't even raised with religion being any significant part of my childhood and I have no interest or fascination in them so I'm not an expert by any means so perhaps I'm wrong on that. I suppose if anything regulations and protections surrounding religion confuses me as a person who has had little to no religious influence that any deeply held beliefs that I have don't get the same protections because they're not considered part of an established religion.
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Comment on A variety of beginner home server questions in ~comp
Grumble4681 Link ParentIt's not entirely clear to me but from those remarks, I get the impression that OP might be sharing media with family members, but not sure if only immediate household members or beyond that. In...but i'd love for core functionality to mostly "just work" after configuring so when I don't have time to do that I'm not stuck telling everyone "oh yeah it'll be broken until I find time to fix it".
Pricey as hell but I'm most willing to spend on this as the cost might very well be split by the family members who want me to guinea pig all this.
It's not entirely clear to me but from those remarks, I get the impression that OP might be sharing media with family members, but not sure if only immediate household members or beyond that. In any case, once you start sharing with other users, there might be a case to be made for Plex if only for the simplicity of the clients existing on nearly every platform with little to no issues.
I've not used Jellyfin myself even though I actually would like to get around to that sometime, but from what I have read, apart from a few of the more popular clients like Android or web based, it sounds a little rougher for clients on less popular platforms. If you're only working with your own hardware, you can more easily control the experience, but if you're inviting family members especially ones outside the household, I could anticipate that being potentially more problematic in some cases. Since I haven't used Jellyfin personally I'm also not 100% on this, but since Jellyfin doesn't have a centralized server like Plex does for coordinating connections, I'd assume you also need to give other users some kind of connection information to put into the configuration of their client in order to make that work, which is just another step for people to potentially trip on if you're going to invite grandparents or less tech inclined people.
Granted, Plex has its own issues in making complexity of setup/onboarding worse for less tech inclined people, partly due to their shift to FAST for revenue so they've further pushed those things into the interface and made it harder for users to tell what content they're accessing, along with the most common complaints from server owners over the years of stupid default settings that force unnecessary transcodes which can be a different onboarding headache for server owners.
So I can see either one having its challenges when you invite other people to share the media with, though traditionally I think Plex has been considered a little bit easier at least. I think the clients being available on nearly all hardware is the biggest selling point in this regard. I think no matter what one you go with, you'll likely end up doing some undesired tech support for people if you're sharing the server out. Conversely, a benefit to Jellyfin over Plex is that you're not doing tech support for Plex's authentication/coordination server outages, because in those scenarios your equipment and services are working fine and it's their fault your users cannot access your server.
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Comment on ‘Red One’ down: How Dwayne Johnson’s tardiness led to a $250 million runaway production in ~movies
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentThe companies are putting their name with their statements generally, the other people mostly seem to be anonymous sources. In that context, it makes sense why there would be that separation of...It's also odd to me that people who worked with him say one thing - but the companies who he worked for are saying something else.
The companies are putting their name with their statements generally, the other people mostly seem to be anonymous sources. In that context, it makes sense why there would be that separation of statements, because no one wants their dirty laundry aired in public even if they don't intend to be late to set 8 hours a day every day, they still might be inclined to avoid working with companies that might publicly tarnish someone's image even if justified. So the companies are incentivized to only say good things publicly. Furthermore, a lot of the companies being discussed here are also being reported in a negative light, so confirming that Dwayne is as bad as the sources say is also in a way confirming the negative things about those companies to also be true. Like Amazon comes out looking like shit in this reporting, to admit that Dwayne is causing problems is to also admit that Amazon is incompetent.
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Comment on I made a mistake, I started using Reddit again in ~talk
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentAnother comment indicated that the ban evasion tool that Reddit developed for mods might be the culprit here, so to an extent I would say that it is on Reddit. The top comment in the post...Another comment indicated that the ban evasion tool that Reddit developed for mods might be the culprit here, so to an extent I would say that it is on Reddit. The top comment in the post announcing that tool is someone critiquing its implementation as being flawed. Poorly designed tooling in the hands of bad mods is what this situation sounds like, which is at least partly on Reddit.
It's actually easy for me to understand poorly designed tooling from Reddit even if I'm not a moderator to use it myself, because I've noticed how Reddit's block feature is so poorly designed that it's easy to abuse, and what's more, they don't seem to respond to feedback or make much adjustments to them, they just seemingly move on to the next poorly designed thing they can implement.
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Comment on Why don't we do more food-based activism? in ~talk
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentI would think food insecurity would matter a little in terms of what and where people are willing to eat at. What is stopping me from eating at a soup kitchen right now, other than I don't want to...A soup kitchen will not have the reach of a social media advertising campaign, sure, but it can be a heck of a lot more effective at actually changing peoples minds and getting them to act, which can have much more actual effect.
I also don't think that food insecurity is an important aspect of this kind of activist organizing technique. The only benefit you get from that is a captive audience, and that brings it's own set of pitfalls.
I would think food insecurity would matter a little in terms of what and where people are willing to eat at. What is stopping me from eating at a soup kitchen right now, other than I don't want to because I have other places I'd prefer to eat from? As far as I know, they don't run background checks or anything to determine my eligibility. I'm sure there's some places that do ask for proof of income but if I tell them I have no income at all, are they going to turn me away because I don't have proof of income? Or are they going to require to see a SNAP card or such? So you couldn't necessarily just run a soup kitchen and expect to have broad appeal or reach because not everyone is just going to choose to eat there. If you run a soup kitchen type service, presumably you'll get the reach of a soup kitchen, which is to say not very much.
I know you said they are focusing too much on financial statistics, but one does need to consider that because what you are proposing isn't necessarily going to have the same costs as a soup kitchen and won't be held to the same standards as a soup kitchen, depending on what you're trying to accomplish or who you're trying to reach. If you want the reach of a soup kitchen with the costs of a soup kitchen, you need the same support a traditional soup kitchen would get. Soup kitchens probably get a lot of donated food, and if it's a soup kitchen operated by a religious institution then it's likely donated food from people of that faith that go to that church. For any other type of activist setup you're proposing, is it going to have that same support or is the parent organization going to have to fully fund the cost of the food? Likewise for the labor to prepare that food for others. Are we saying that if PETA wanted to operate a vegan soup kitchen as part of their cause to convert people to veganism, that PETA members are going to volunteer to work at this soup kitchen every day? Maybe they would, but I'm skeptical of this being a consistent model. To me the costs seem like they're going to align closer to a restaurant than they are to a soup kitchen. I think that means financial statistics matter a lot, even if you don't expect the service itself to generate revenue to sustain itself but rather expect the overarching mission of the activism to get a return on that investment through converting people to the cause.
So I think the cost is important. To me the cost is something we should be able to easily determine why this doesn't happen. What does it cost to operate a restaurant? Now of course there's tons of variables to that, but I just picked something simple to start with.
What's a simple restaurant that almost everyone in America has probably been to? McDonalds.
So of course there's more costs in there than just the operating costs, since there's franchise fees and real estate cost etc., but let's just say it costs significantly lower that to just $1 million per year to operate a restaurant like McDonalds to reach the same amount of customers. Let's say you're giving all this food away for free so you're not making a single penny off this venture. Mind you, this is ONE restaurant in ONE single location that has a limited capacity to serve so many people, how many organizations spend $1 million to reach that amount of customers?
I don't know how best to determine the reach of the restaurant, I'm sure you could figure that by amount of locations already made that those franchises determined they met the demand of any given region roughly speaking. You can't really look at daily customers or such because many of them are probably repeat customers throughout the year, which past a certain point is probably not super useful for an activist type of situation you're describing since once you've converted someone to your cause you really don't have as much to gain from them unless it's required that your ongoing subsidized food is what keeps them aligned with your cause.
There are more than 13,000 McDonalds in the US, so if you want the national reach of McDonalds, it would seemingly cost 13,000 x 1 million. If I'm not using some bad logic here (which I'm sure is quite possible), I think that is $13 billion per year. How many organizations can just spend $13 billion per year to fund an activist side project that makes no money on its own? Even if you could somehow reduce the amount of restaurants and still get the same reach, you're still in the billions.
If you significantly reduce the restaurants and reduce the reach, then yes your costs come down greatly, but it reduces the overall effectiveness of your activism if quantity of people converted or aligned to your cause is considered as part of the effectiveness. Presumably somewhere in here, the costs scale relative to the effectiveness, meaning if it's not feasible or worth it to spend billions per year to try to reach everyone in the US, how is it any better to spend millions to reach significantly fewer people?
The next step would be to look into some activist type of organizations similar to what you're imagining and look at their finances and see what kind of things they are doing now and what kind of reach they are getting out of the money they are spending now. I would imagine that it's much better than what we're talking about above with food.
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Comment on US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentNo they take marching orders from the highest bidders, whether that be wealthy owners and shareholders, other corporate interests related to various business dealings, and advertisers, plus other...American social media companies do not take marching orders from the US government.
No they take marching orders from the highest bidders, whether that be wealthy owners and shareholders, other corporate interests related to various business dealings, and advertisers, plus other interests. So instead of being told what to think by the CCP, you can be told what to think by the oligopolies and wealthy elite in America instead.
Yes, one is almost certainly better than the other if only because the latter still haven't completely dispensed with the usefulness of the population for labor so there is still mutually beneficial interests, whereas the CCP doesn't have much if any mutual interests to benefit the American public, but it's still a grim reality that acknowledges the power of these platforms to influence and doing nothing about the big picture of that and only targeting foreign adversaries ability to misuse that power.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentMore so the latter, but presumably anyone who thinks that puts them on the pace for civil war would also be saying that you shouldn't do something that potentially leads to that. That seems...More so the latter, but presumably anyone who thinks that puts them on the pace for civil war would also be saying that you shouldn't do something that potentially leads to that. That seems consistent to me. Though I hedge that a bit by not necessarily placing a value judgement on it in the sense that everyone has a limit for what they are willing to tolerate before they are willing to fight. So I don't cast judgement on someone who has been oppressed by Republican leadership or Trump or will potentially be oppressed by them should they gain even more power if they instead have an outlook that fighting is the way forward, but instead I get the impression that people don't want violence however they use rhetoric that I think contributes to the cycle that will lead to violence and I'm simply trying to say that if they don't want violence they should replace that rhetoric with something that doesn't contribute to the cycle of escalating rhetoric of violence. If they view violence as inevitable, then I don't blame them for fighting back.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentI don't think it is your obligation to do so. Again I'll take it back to the idea of, it's not your individual obligation to house a homeless person, but perhaps it is our collective obligation....I'd also really like to see more consideration that the burden is being put on, often, the minoritized populations to put up with harassment and indignity to try "educate" those who are doing the harassing. It is frustrating, even as an educator, to be consistently told it's my obligation to help a homophobic person not be homophobic.
I don't think it is your obligation to do so. Again I'll take it back to the idea of, it's not your individual obligation to house a homeless person, but perhaps it is our collective obligation. It's not your obligation more because you're the one impacted directly, but you may feel the obligation because you're impacted more directly, for any given problem that one is impacted by anyhow. This is true for any problem. There are numerous problems that I have or other people have that you don't have, and you aren't going to feel the same overriding urgency to resolve those problems as those who have to deal with them, that's just seemingly the nature of our consciousness to some extent. Someone who has a tent city outside their front door isn't more obligated to take in someone in their home, but they are more impacted by the unresolved problem and may feel that obligation more so because of that.
Personally, I need less of being told how much we shouldn't put the dehumanizing people in the street, I was never gonna do that. I need more of the people telling me that to be speaking up to the homophobic, racist, fascist, etc. comments. A "dude not cool" goes a long way.
If I saw those remarks here, then I'd be more inclined to be in that position to say something, yet I don't think I've come across much along the lines of what you're speaking of. So instead of seeing me have that response, you see me have this response instead. You can't see me addressing a problem that doesn't exist in a place where you have visibility of what I'm doing.
Granted by saying that I'm not pretending I'm Mother Teresa or MLK Jr outside of Tildes, but in the few instances where I've had exposure to people with something in the realm of hateful or negative ideas, I think I've taken the opportunity to address that with them in ways that I thought might constructively change their mind. I think my parents might have had a similar trajectory to how some other people on here might describe their parents in terms of getting sucked into the conservative news hole but I had a few conversations especially with my father about aspects of those perspectives that aren't what they seem and he responded positively to that. Prior to those conversations I got the impression there was a possibility they might have gotten pulled into the Trump sphere the first go around, but over the years whenever I go to their house they don't have Fox News on, if they have a news channel on at all it's more likely to be CNN or local news or something more generic, and they're in the demographic that Trump has done well with, no college degree suburban with rural upbringings.
I'm not saying you disagree with this, some of this is my broader frustration at being told to be nicer to people who express hateful opinions of me. It does come out at time.
I'm not really even asking anyone to be overly nice or accommodating. All I was trying to convey is that I think some of the terms being used contribute to a negative cycle that will seemingly lead to violence if the cycle isn't stopped. I don't think that requires anyone to start befriending every conservative they come across or asking them how their day is going, but simply to tone down the negative rhetoric in an attempt to stop the cycle.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentThat's along the lines of what I'm trying to convey, and what prompted it was the comment I responded to saying that it's dangerous to see the circumstances that way without realizing the inherent...To put things in a more poetic manner, if calling out fascists is a form of violence, then it is only fair to say that we are already at war.
That's along the lines of what I'm trying to convey, and what prompted it was the comment I responded to saying that it's dangerous to see the circumstances that way without realizing the inherent danger of it. If calling out fascists is a form of violence, and that means we're at war, then we should stop pretending like we're not. I realize that you aren't agreeing that calling people fascist nazis is rhetoric of violence, but that phrase is basically what I was trying to express.
Literally everyone who has seen any positive change in the past 100 years are looking to see that reverse
Right, and this is what part of what I'm trying to convey. After all that progress, now we're looking at going backwards, not forwards, and somehow people keep responding to me like I'm the problem because I'm trying to highlight that we're participating in a negative cycle that is possibly contributing to that reversal of progress. Why is it that 10-15 years after the rise of smartphones and more immediate and common access to the internet and social media by the general populace we're talking about the reversal of improvements that happened? Is it not more than just a coincidence that we're all just words on a screen now, if even that, that everyone is treated with less humanity to them than before because we interact through a medium that carries so little of that humanity in it? Is it not more than a coincidence that some of the people who have responded to me say that they don't see every republican as a fascist nazi and they can have relatively peaceful interactions with republicans they know in person, yet seemingly not so much online? Is it not a coincidence that the news and information people gather is a bubble of similar ideas, more groupthink and less dialoguing from different viewpoints? Why the rise of all of these things and the sudden and stark trend of reversing progress that you speak of?
Why is it that we can see how Israel attacking Iran military leadership in Syria and then Iran responding, and then Israel responding, and then Iran responding, as a negative cycle that is an escalation of violence regardless of who you see at fault for starting it or who is right or wrong for continuing to respond, but somehow if I try to say that moderating a response to violent rhetoric with less violent rhetoric is a possible means to avoiding violent outcomes, that I'm somehow the opposition? And no, I'm not interested in having a conversation about Israel and Iran or debating who is responsible or who isn't or who is in the right or who isn't, that isn't the point at all. The point is that we can look at that situation no matter what perspective you have of it and see the cycle and the outcome if that cycle is continued.
I find it quite compelling that simply arguing that using rhetoric that dehumanizes people is violent is somehow so controversial to garner the amount of responses I have. Yes, I get that it's a response to other people using similar or worse rhetoric to dehumanize, but how is it making anything better? This response doesn't seem to be dwindling their numbers but only growing them.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentWhat you italicized as the 'counterexample' I responded to by saying that every subsequent loss to the 'fascist' Republican party over the past couple decades has only given rise to Trump who has...I mean I literally italicized the counterexample to your logically false argument. I offered a clear, realistic, and non-violent alternative that has worked before, both in terms of fascists previously losing elections and in terms of fascists previously existing on the fringe of even right-wing politics. The suggestion that violence is a necessity is quite simply against the facts.
What you italicized as the 'counterexample' I responded to by saying that every subsequent loss to the 'fascist' Republican party over the past couple decades has only given rise to Trump who has garnered some success in terms of his following after claiming an election was fraudulent. He was beaten at the ballot box, and then he claimed that it was fraudulent, and now he's back and potentially has more support than he did in the prior election, if polls are anything to go by. So what you are saying has simply led to an escalation of violent rhetoric from Trump and various supporters within that faction. So instead of acknowledging that I made a response to this, you simply pretended as though I said nothing at all and chose to make a snarky remark about how you italicized the solution.
I'm not going to respond to you any further because you're arguing in bad faith in terms of saying that I'm providing cover for fascists. That is a sign to me that you are not responding in good faith and are simply intending to align me with fascists in an attempt to nullify anything I say.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentDeprogramming was really an option because the Nazis escalated to violence not only on their own population but then invaded other populations, it gave other countries and people of those...Deprogramming was really an option because the Nazis escalated to violence not only on their own population but then invaded other populations, it gave other countries and people of those countries the standing to forcefully remove the Nazi leadership and implement the deprogramming you're speaking of. Violence in the terms of taking down leadership in another party or country is easily justified when done as a defense to that violence, because it requires violence to achieve that. You have to fight back, and in turn you have to take out the threat.
I think it also highlights the difference in calling your average Republican a Nazi and what the Nazi party did. Maybe we're close to that, until it happens we don't know if we're at a precipice of the beginning or not, but you cannot simply forcefully deprogram 40%+ of your population on a systematic scale until there is an escalation of violence, because that forceful deprogramming will be seen as part of the escalation of violence. While January 6th did have some violence, some of those people have gone through the justice system and received consequences for their actions. I don't know that you can extrapolate that to the point of saying you now have standing to forcefully deprogram 40%+ of your population.
People seem to be thinking I'm making a value judgement when I say it's a rhetoric of violence. I'm not. I'm not condemning someone for using what I perceive as violent rhetoric. Maybe I should be. Instead what I perceive is that a lot of people don't see it as violent rhetoric, and I'm trying to illustrate how there's no turning back if that's how we see things. If there's no turning back, violence is the inevitable result. If the people promoting this rhetoric understand that is the end result and that is what they are preparing for, then so be it, but there should at least be some reconciliation of the truth within that. If you see a different version of how this can go that isn't violent, then I have to wonder how someone reconciles that vision while using that rhetoric.
In no case am I arguing that fascists should propagate or just give them free reign to do as they please, all I'm saying is that my perspective is, if you desire a potential peaceful outcome, I don't think that approach to becoming intolerant of the person behind either the disdained or hateful message is going to achieve that outcome. If you've given up hope that any peaceful outcome for the future can happen, then by all means keep calling all republicans fascist nazis. We can be intolerant of what they wish to achieve without being intolerant of the person, and to an extent that is what we expect of them at the bare minimum. What do you expect of a person who disagrees with you? To respect you, to not harm you, to not try to take away your rights etc. and while many Republicans may not be adhering to it, I think it becomes a negative cycle that has no way to change peacefully if others also participate in that behavior.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentThere's no one here on this site that has that view for me to express it to. If you look at my comments in here, I think it's fair to say that I'm not being brief exactly and there's a balance to...My problem is that you appear to view calling someone a fascist as ending any hope of peace or civility but don't seem to consider openly calling for people like me to be exterminated as doing the same.
There's no one here on this site that has that view for me to express it to. If you look at my comments in here, I think it's fair to say that I'm not being brief exactly and there's a balance to strike between what I can include and what I can't, and it seems pretty fair to me to not extend my comments further by including information that could easily be seen as a given or implied if given some benefit of doubt if there is any. So if I'm 6+ paragraphs in, it doesn't seem particularly efficient or effective to convey that the equivalent behavior from others ends hope of peace or civility especially when those people don't exist here to express it to, and it might seem this one disclaimer is worth including but there's probably 20 other disclaimers I could have also included and had to not include for similar reasons.
If I'm appealing to a person who I view as having a more developed perspective of things and is more receptive to other ideas and is more aligned with my viewpoints, I'm probably doing so because I expect that to have a better outcome. I don't expect to be able to go into a conservative or republican bubble as an outsider and try to express these ideas and expect to have any actual reception to them whatsoever. You can view that in a couple ways, my own bias towards those viewpoints has such low expectations that I'm not any better because I also don't think highly of them, or that they really are so far off the rails that they can't be reasoned with, or that as an outsider who doesn't have anywhere near their perspective and no reputation in their circles they have no reason to respect anything I say considering that is effectively the current environment as constructed regardless of who started it, you can't be an outsider in someone else's bubble and have any input in that bubble.
It's not necessarily different than a teacher who might push a student harder, not because they hate the student or because they want them to suffer or such, but possibly because they expect more from that student or they believe that student is more capable and that pushing them isn't a waste of time and it might actually result in something beneficial. And no I'm not saying I'm the teacher and everyone else here is the student or that I'm somehow in a position of superiority, I'm not equating the roles exactly, I'm only attempting to utilize the similarities in terms of why someone would bother to put in the effort to do something for someone else or with someone else, because they think it might have some possible beneficial outcome.
But considering what's at best criticism of authoritarian regressive politics and at worst name-calling with "rhetoric of violence" but ignoring the violent rhetoric in the GOP's publicly stated policy positions is absurd. Why is it rhetoric of violence for me to call DeSantis a nazi and not violent rhetoric for him to call me a groomer?
It is rhetoric of violence for DeSantis to say that or Trump to say any of the things he has said. I didn't say it because I assumed it's sort of a given. All I'm saying is that if you take an oppositional and equal stance, there's no place for people who might be borderline or willing to change to go, because there's no bridge left between you and them. Again, the royal you. If the peaceful outcome is to change hearts and minds, then arguably calling people fascist nazis doesn't help, because it instead pushes borderline people into the extremes and creates bubbles that makes those extremes more extreme. Just like their rhetoric of violence has no way of positively influencing you to their viewpoints, your rhetoric of violence would have no way of positively influencing them to your viewpoints.
This is not to say that you must approve of others, you can express disapproval for others who are doing wrong while still treating them basic respect and dignity even if they don't do the same. No, this doesn't mean you have to be their doormat or they get to walk all over you because they have no rules and you're adhering to some ethics. I don't know what your personal perspective is on criminal justice but overall on this site I generally perceive it to be more of a leftist set of perspectives on criminal justice, which generally encompasses giving people who have committed crimes opportunities to better themselves or correct their course rather than condemning them for life or writing them off as a lost cause. I think there's an element that has become impersonal about that subject where people can take that perspective, though sometimes when it becomes personal it reverts back to wanting to see the person punished more harshly or such. Broad strokes however, the concept is that you don't write people off even if they've done wrong, but you also don't let them off the hook or abuse you or others. It's not directly equivalent to how we should view others with drastically different viewpoints than ours or possibly harmful viewpoints, but I still look at it as a matter of looking at the human underneath it all and trying to determine how as a society we should treat these people to best create better outcomes for society. To me that means giving people with those drastically different and possibly even harmful viewpoints the decency of not simply just labeling them fascist nazis and be willing to consider them as people who you can dialogue with if they're willing to meet a certain standard of respect. Maybe on some level people think they're willing to do this, but I don't think it ends up working out this way because the standard becomes higher and higher as you insulate yourself more and more in a bubble. It becomes increasingly unlikely to ever have this middle ground to meet on.
Of course no one has to agree with me. If you don't view it as violent rhetoric, then that's fine. I probably won't be alive long enough to suffer the outcome no matter what the outcome is. And maybe there's no turning back. To me, I just view calling 40%+ of the population fascist nazis (not saying you said this, but there are other comments that have this implication or even statement behind it) as one that has only one outcome, violence, because I don't see any way for people in that 40% to change if that's how we treat them. And that many people, with that massive gulf between them and that much animosity between them, you can't simply hope to just keep beating them in elections and they will go away. It might be in part why it's so effective that you have a candidate that literally lies and says the election was fraudulent, because that large group of people might be making the mental transition to being unwilling to simply accept being totally and completely outcasted and subsequently unwilling to accept just losing an election and the outcomes that come with that.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentI don't think I was intending to elicit any sympathetic response, I think I was trying to be blunt and get across what I perceive to be the end result of that rhetoric when describing such a large...- Exemplary
I don't think I was intending to elicit any sympathetic response, I think I was trying to be blunt and get across what I perceive to be the end result of that rhetoric when describing such a large portion of the population you coexist with. I wasn't saying it to shame someone for using rhetoric of violence, which you may not even agree that the rhetoric is one of violence, but merely stating that if everyone is holding a weapon and pointing it at each other, that's not an indicator of a peace. To call someone a fascist nazi is basically to write off their existence, that person you have no intention of having any amicable interaction with and have no interest in compromising with, because if they are truly a fascist nazi, you may not be able to justify doing that as you might see it as enabling or supporting them.
That's why I say it's rhetoric of violence, because if that is how you (the royal you) perceive someone, there's no hope of peace or civility with that person. There's no bridge that they can ever cross to meet you halfway or even come to your side. Yet you coexist with them in the same space in terms of our country/government, there's no ignoring the other person's existence and just hoping you don't have to deal with them. And there's been some comments here and in general the whole topic here is about the label of Republican, so we're not just talking about calling 5% of the population or such fascist nazis, Republicans in general are being labeled as that, and that's 40%+ of the potential voters. I'm stating 40% just because seemingly polls indicate the race is close at the least if not Republican favored, and obviously Trump won once before even though he didn't have the majority of the popular vote, so 40% is enough to express the significance of how many people are being labeled as this while not overstating the percentage.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentIf you're calling 40%+ of the population fascists, how are you going to push them to the fringes of society? If your perspective is that 40%+ of the population are fascist nazis, then what do you...I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't logically follow that if you call a fascist a fascist, or if you call a racist a racist, you must therefore be willing to kill them. That's just absurd.
If you're calling 40%+ of the population fascists, how are you going to push them to the fringes of society? If your perspective is that 40%+ of the population are fascist nazis, then what do you realistically expect the outcome to be?
What I am saying is that if you perceive that many people to be fascist nazis, and if your perceptions are not extreme and are in fact accurately depicting the reality, then what outcome can you realistically expect other than violence? If every republican is a fascist nazi, that's not some 5% fringe population. Even if you beat them in the next election, they're not simply just going to go away. Arguably that's been the battle for decades, and now we've arrived at the current GOP with Trump as the figurehead which is seemingly quite worse than the past several decades, this solution clearly doesn't seem to be working if the goal is to just continue to call them fascist nazis and hope you can keep beating them in the next election.
If your perception is extreme and not accurately depicting reality, that not every republican is a fascist nazi, then calling them that and treating them as such is either a self-fulfilling prophecy or simply further distances you from those people to the point where there's no compromises or middle ground, because you perceive them to be a fascist nazi you can't possibly compromise with them, and this is in the hypothetical scenario where somehow you could objectively measure that they aren't and your perception of them is just extreme. If you aren't willing to compromise with them, then you're the extreme one to them.
If you have an alternative outcome to this scenario then feel free to let it be known.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 Link ParentI don't know if there's an established way to express this that I'm not aware of that would be more effective at expressing it than I'm capable of doing on my own, but in my mind there is a...I don't like equating the two things, because as much as you say it's fine, you also pivot and imply it isn't on a societal level.
In short, I object to the conflation of unsubbing due to coverage I find biased, inaccurate and distasteful with dehumanizing or shunning.
I don't know if there's an established way to express this that I'm not aware of that would be more effective at expressing it than I'm capable of doing on my own, but in my mind there is a distinction between what an individual does, and what groups of individuals do that occurs more on the societal level, and the responsibilities or accountabilities of those differ.
So when I say it's fine for the individual to do it, but that it's not good on a societal level, there's no conflict to that for me because there are distinctions to how those happen. Maybe that comes across as hypocritical, I don't know. I view it as, society, the apparatus and institutions we build or allow to exist etc. have a greater responsibility to what happens on a societal level, and the individual has the responsibility for what happens on an individual level, in terms of accountability anyhow. Meaning the individual isn't accountable for NYT losing subscribers because the individual doesn't agree with something the NYT does, but the apparatus we created that has a hand in it potentially encourages large scale outcomes that are bad for society. That could be as simple as lax regulation that allows for social media companies to broadcast harmful ideas or something more complex. I'm simplifying that a bit as I do think individuals have some accountability in crowd behavior type situations that the individual has some accountability but that's not what is being discussed here.
I also don't know that I'm expressing or equating even many people unsubbing from the service as a collective action at the societal level as dehumanizing others, perhaps shunning others but I don't know that it's even that straightforward, and again that's going with the higher standard at the societal level, the individual would not have that responsibility necessarily. It's not my intent to say that the action itself is inherently dehumanizing anyone, so if that's what my prior comment had expressions of it wasn't what I intended for it to express. I think the outcome has possibilities of dehumanizing people, but the connectedness of the action and the outcome isn't so direct as to necessarily be able to equate the two, even on a societal level and even less so on an individual level. Because of the complexities of our society, actions and outcomes aren't always direct and that means there are other factors at play. So I don't assume because an action results in an outcome, that it inherently means those who did the action are responsible for the outcome. It just depends on the circumstances. That however doesn't mean that IF there is a negative outcome, that there shouldn't be an attempt to correct it.
But when people say I'm not human, that I don't deserve basic human rights, I get to choose to draw a boundary. When I'm educating that boundary is different than in my personal life, when I'm online that boundary is different than when I'm in person and when I'm tired that boundary is different than when I'm fresh.
I have no disagreement with this and hopefully wasn't expressing anything to the contrary. Again, I also find that this differs on an individual level. Much like it's commonly accepted that you shouldn't have to open up your home to give someone who is homeless a place to stay but rather there's still an expectation on a societal level that as a collective we should be able to offer a place to stay for people in those situations, but it's not on any one individual to personally take on the burdens of that. The only thing I really have to add to this is that on a societal level, it doesn't benefit us to treat those people in-kind. I'm not saying you advocated for that, so my mentioning of it isn't to contrast with anything you expressed, I mention it because it's inherently part of what I was previously expressing and your comment here helps me provide a little more specificity. If someone says you aren't human and doesn't deserve basic human rights, on a societal level, it does not benefit us to treat them in kind and not treat them as human even if they don't necessarily deserve the basic respect and dignity that they themselves won't provide to others, because they don't necessarily see the reasoning why they get treated that way in-kind. They may only see the action and that it further justifies the behavior of not respecting others because others are doing it to them. In the end, if everyone is flinging shit at each other, at some point it doesn't matter who was initially justified in doing so and who wasn't, because the end result isn't that flinging shit made everything better, it just meant the situation devolved into everyone flinging shit.
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Comment on NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism in ~news
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentI think it's almost the interpretation of how to approach the paradox of tolerance taken to its extreme. It became the standard to be intolerant of the intolerant, The divide only grows and grows,...- Exemplary
I think it's almost the interpretation of how to approach the paradox of tolerance taken to its extreme. It became the standard to be intolerant of the intolerant, The divide only grows and grows, where even people left of center become the enemy of the far left because there's so much distance between the left and the right that you can't even see the other side anymore, so your most common disagreements come with people you were once previously considered fairly aligned with.
You can see this intolerance of the intolerant all over this thread. I think to an extent it makes sense and it works, but that's the extreme, there's no middle ground anymore because as the perception of what is intolerant changes based on who you've already eliminated from the equation, there's nowhere for people to go except the extremes. It highlights the problem that there's now this political division of where news happens, because there's no room for anyone to be exposed to other ideas.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/paywall-problems-media-trust-democracy/678032/
That's likely behind a paywall for most people, but the title of it is "Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls" and my reading of it is that the person writing it is saying paywalls put the most valid sources of information out of reach for a lot of people who can't or don't want to pay for news, and effectively makes those people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation because they have less access to better sourced information. It was also argued that allowing some access through paywalls in some cases increases uptake in subscriptions because people got exposure to a service they wouldn't have otherwise.
This same argument to me can be taken for viewpoints too. I'm not really trying to call anyone out here and just using it as a topical example, but there's some comments in this post that talk about not paying for NYT because of disagreements in their coverage. That's of course within someone's right to do, to not pay a company for any reason they want, no one is obligated or responsible for supporting any given company. However when done on a wide-scale and operating on the same idea of no room for the intolerant or disagreeable views, you end up with a bubble where the only people interested in reading that site are the ones who already agree with everything they say, and the people who don't will find somewhere else and they will do the same thing but something that aligns with their existing viewpoints. So all these news organizations just end up being bubbles of what each in-group they can accommodate will accept, and now there's no exposure to other ideas because no one is willing to tolerate disagreements. So the intolerant become more intolerant because they have no exposure to other ideas because they moved off to their own bubble where the same thing happens in their bubble. Not to mention their intolerance becomes further justified because now they're the ones not being tolerated. I'm sure the hope was that the lesson they would come away with is that if they wanted to be tolerated they'd improve their intolerant views, and maybe some people did make that change, but for those that remained, now the divide is there and there's no bridge left to bring them back across. To me, I find this notion that just shunning people because they have intolerant views will make them a better person similar to blaming a poor person for being poor and it's somehow going to make them more successful if you punish them for something they likely don't have the resources or ability to correct on their own. We know pulling yourselves up by the bootstraps is bullshit when it comes to economics, so why should we expect that someone who has poor thinking or understanding of the world (from our perspective) is going to be able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and become a better person, especially if we withdraw any support or resources to them? Relegating their existence to a bubble of more extreme intolerance is akin to putting a poor person in jail for being poor and thinking that somehow will motivate them and help them be better. You can replace poor with people addicted to drugs or various other maladies of society and humanity that we deal with and it's still the same message, those problems are a symptom of the society we created and can't necessarily be resolved by the individual themselves, and so are these polarizing viewpoints.
I think being intolerant of intolerant outcomes is still a great thing, but somewhere along the way, the intolerance of outcomes became intolerance of viewpoints, which became intolerance of people who are perceived to have those viewpoints. I think that explains how it's dangerous like you said, because intolerance is meant to limit or eliminate the undesirable element. Intolerant of intolerant outcomes is great, you want to eliminate intolerant outcomes. Intolerance of intolerant viewpoints, maybe still great to eliminate intolerant viewpoints but maybe questionable depending on how it's accomplished or various other problems, but now we've arrived at intolerance of people, so are we ready to eliminate these people?
The rhetoric of calling all Republicans fascists and nazis, while I understand where it comes from, to me, that rhetoric needs to be understood to be rhetoric of war. Rhetoric of violence and war. If you don't think there's any way to improve our current situation other than through violent war, then that rhetoric fits the situation. If you have any hope or desire to improve the situation peacefully, then that rhetoric won't accomplish the goal. That isn't to say there aren't some extremes within this party or on this side of the political spectrum that do truly closely fit with this rhetoric, but to me the idea that 40%+ of the US population are fascist nazis illustrates the extremism, either the rhetoric is extreme or our circumstances are that dire that you actually expect and are preparing for a civil war soon.
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Comment on How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went horribly sideways in ~finance
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentNotable that the specifications for that generator you referenced says its 540lbs, and a small open utility type trailer could be somewhere between 300-700lbs. You could be adding 1000lbs of...Notable that the specifications for that generator you referenced says its 540lbs, and a small open utility type trailer could be somewhere between 300-700lbs. You could be adding 1000lbs of weight which is also harder on your brakes and tires. Even if it worked, you'd be trading range anxiety for trailer anxiety, because a trailer does require some work to properly secure it and it's not necessarily something people are familiar with to reverse with or take corners with.
Also 540lbs is too heavy to use any of those cargo carrier type racks that just secure to the hitch without a trailer. Even if you had a rack that could support that weight, most cars and the hitches that are appropriate for those can only handle like 200lbs tongue weight. For example, something like this says it can handle 500lbs, which 540 already exceeds that but additionally you need a vehicle and a hitch that can handle 550lbs of tongue weight. At that point you're probably up to trucks that are designed for towing and you could likely just use the open bed if you secure the generator anyhow.
Figured I'd add that as it does really highlight how unrealistic it would be to use a generator like that.
Also I recently made a trip in my 2015 Toyota Corolla over 400 miles with no trailer and no weight really in my car other than me, and got about 35mpg, and then did the same trip again with a 5x8 enclosed uhaul trailer and towed it with that very same Corolla and got 25mpg. I probably added 1500-2000lbs of weight including the trailer and all my belongings onto my car, and iirc my Corolla is just under 3000lbs when unloaded. So I was only getting like 70% of the mpg that I got with my vehicle unloaded. I don't know if a generator on an open trailer would be worse for aerodynamics than a 5x8 enclosed uhaul trailer though. Obviously that's not an EV, but figured it's relevant when talking about loss of efficiency from added weight and aerodynamics.
They should lose their copyright then. Either design the game to be playable without their servers, meaning allow the community to use their own servers or use p2p connections etc., keep the servers up forever, or give up your copyright. That should be the options given. Of course almost no company is likely to choose keeping the server up forever as that's a bit ridiculous, but that illustrates the point effectively, they should not get to decide when people stop using a product they paid for.