Akir's recent activity
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Comment on Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful in ~tech
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Comment on Have you ever been outed? in ~lgbt
Akir LinkSort of. I’m Demi-closeted at work. I’m a teacher and so I don’t want to cause drama with parents who think I will turn their kids gay. When I talk to people about my husband I generally use...Sort of. I’m Demi-closeted at work. I’m a teacher and so I don’t want to cause drama with parents who think I will turn their kids gay. When I talk to people about my husband I generally use gender neutral terms like partner or spouse, and “they” as a pronoun.
I had one student who was extremely personable and pried into my private life a lot - probably as a distraction technique. He was an occasionally frustrating but generally likable kid. He asked if I was married and about my “wife”, and while I didn’t correct his term something - I don’t recall exactly what - finally gave it away. Honestly it was probably my phone lock screen, which has had his face on it forever.
It went perfectly fine. Honestly I think he might have been teasingly calling me gay (which sadly seems to have come back into fashion in my area in that age group) at first, because he seemed taken aback when I confirmed he was correct. Oh well. He took it well. We didn’t really talk about it after that class, and I hadn’t heard anything about it from his parents or my coworkers so as far as I’m aware he never told anyone else.
I will say he slacked off less after clocking me. As much as I’d like to think it was because he saw me as a real person and respected me more because of it, it was probably because it was a tutoring course for a completion and he was starting to gear into it.
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Comment on Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful in ~tech
Akir Link ParentSpam phone calls have gotten so bad that basically every phone call gets intercepted by the spam filter now. If you need me and it’s an emergency you better leave me a message or I might not even...Spam phone calls have gotten so bad that basically every phone call gets intercepted by the spam filter now. If you need me and it’s an emergency you better leave me a message or I might not even realize you tried to contact me.
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Comment on McDonald’s built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
Akir Link ParentI don’t see why we can’t blame all parties involved.I don’t see why we can’t blame all parties involved.
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Comment on McDonald’s built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
Akir Link ParentAFAIK restaurants everywhere have always been perfectly fine to do this without collecting information about individual customers. They just look at the trends of what they sell.AFAIK restaurants everywhere have always been perfectly fine to do this without collecting information about individual customers. They just look at the trends of what they sell.
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Comment on McDonald’s built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
Akir Link ParentExactly. When people started to talk about McDonalds becoming expensive there were always people saying “you can still get good deals if you use the app.” No, that means that the price is still...Exactly. When people started to talk about McDonalds becoming expensive there were always people saying “you can still get good deals if you use the app.”
No, that means that the price is still up, you are just subsidizing them with the sale of your personal information, and furthermore you’re getting a terrible deal.
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Comment on McDonald’s built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
Akir LinkHeres a fun personal fact about me, I actually stopped eating at McDonald’s before I became a health nut entirely because of their appification and invasive data harvesting practices. They are...Heres a fun personal fact about me, I actually stopped eating at McDonald’s before I became a health nut entirely because of their appification and invasive data harvesting practices. They are very much not operating for the public good.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Akir Link ParentFrankly I agree with you. But I also believe that while positive change isn’t impossible, it’s been made monumentally difficult and the deck has been stacked in favor of those with power, with the...Frankly I agree with you. But I also believe that while positive change isn’t impossible, it’s been made monumentally difficult and the deck has been stacked in favor of those with power, with the trend further entrenching power further and further away from the people. If, on the other hand, enough people thought things were hopeless and discontented, Mangione could have sparked a revolution, for better or worse (and in the short term, absolutely worse).
Maybe I am being defeatist. But civil rights are being defeated constantly in recent years. We recently saw rights to abortion get clawed back, and we are watching trans rights getting trampled in real time. Americans are supposed to be promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but it certainly doesn’t seem like society is set to achieve that for everyone.
We all deserve a fairer society with better opportunities and a general baseline of welfare. I would vastly prefer to achieve that through nonviolent means. And frankly given the rise of fascism I don’t think that a revolution would actually achieve this without the country going through another civil war.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Akir Link ParentI don’t want anyone to be murdered. But I also don’t want people to be unaccountable for their actions. But as long as we live in an unequal society we will continue to see assasination attempts.I don’t want anyone to be murdered. But I also don’t want people to be unaccountable for their actions. But as long as we live in an unequal society we will continue to see assasination attempts.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Akir Link ParentI already said every us president is subject to this. As the heads of government, with impeachment proving to be completely ineffective, assassination is literally the only punishment a president...I already said every us president is subject to this. As the heads of government, with impeachment proving to be completely ineffective, assassination is literally the only punishment a president will ever receive for their actions in office.
Laws exist to protect the government. The rights they grant are the bones they throw to the people to prevent them from uprising. Restraining their power is merely a means to reinforce the illusion of justice and legitimacy. If the government wants to do something that is illegal it will and then it will simply come up with a framework to make that action legal. See, for instance, what the US did to racially Japanese citizens around WWII.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Akir Link ParentWhy not? The US government is doing something reprehensible somewhere in the world at all times and is literally directly murdering people. As a counterpoint why not have Trump or Bush murdered?...Why not? The US government is doing something reprehensible somewhere in the world at all times and is literally directly murdering people. As a counterpoint why not have Trump or Bush murdered? Both of them were objectively criminal and continue to get away scuff free.
The law is irrelevant. Law is a measure of organization. It is the force of government on the people. It is very different from morality or ethics, and is in many cases adversarial to them. That is the very problem we are addressing; the laws exist to uphold and empower a small class of people at the expense of the masses, and that is something that should not be tolerated.
In any case I am not saying that I think we should all go out and murder people, I’m saying when all avenues for change are closed it is the best possible option. Like it or not, that is the world we are living in. Our elections are becoming increasingly restricted and our politicians are so dedicated to the status quo we are only now starting to get some of them who are willing to admit to basic things like the Palestinian genocide. The majority of politicians in office right now are fairly dedicated to the cause of letting the ultra-wealthy extract even more from the masses. We are in a very bad place.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Akir Link ParentHere’s a fun point of discussion: I believe that it is fundamentally unethical and perhaps even immoral to be a CEO of an S&P 500. The average salary in that position is over $22,000,000. To put...Here’s a fun point of discussion: I believe that it is fundamentally unethical and perhaps even immoral to be a CEO of an S&P 500. The average salary in that position is over $22,000,000. To put that into scale, it is not only more money that I have made so far in my life, it is more money than I am likely to make in my lifetime. They are a wealth extractor that takes away from the budget which could be just as easily be used to pay more to the people who are actually doing the labor that runs the business which generates its income. They are thieves who run organizations which are themselves extractive, with anticompetitive practices which at best prevent their competition from having some of their business and at worst literally lead to people dying such as these insurance companies do. They are, effectively, mob bosses.
I believe in the concept of a “moral vacuum”. If enough people are incensed about something happening, the relative moral good of other actions increases. This works particularly well on an individual level. Why do people murder? “I had to. They were asking for it. They deserved it.” Someone was wronged so they thought the only way to correct it was to murder the person who wronged them.
You can say that this kind of thinking is wrong, that we have to be above it. And socially you are right, but this is a fundamentally human way of thinking. Everyone has a breaking point in which they get violent.
I don’t want people to die, but clearly our society has problems that the people in charge are uninterested in fixing. Murder may be indefensible in almost every ethical framework, but what do you do if you have no options to remediate the crimes done against not only you, but your family, everyone you care about, and everyone else in your nation?
You are right that things would be chaos if everyone would murder the people heading organizations that wronged them, but we do have examples of this happening: wars for independence and political revolutions. Do they always turn out well? Certainly not. But there are also examples where the people’s goals were achieved. Much like you, I’d much prefer to live in a world where leadership were flexible enough to preclude the assumed need for such things to happen.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Akir Link ParentFYI your YouTube link includes your account in it. You might want to fix that.FYI your YouTube link includes your account in it. You might want to fix that.
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Comment on Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker in ~tech
Akir Link ParentIn iOS every browser is forced to use WebKit as its rendering engine, which makes them all essentially wrappers around Safari. Except in the EU, where lawmakers actually care about people and the...In iOS every browser is forced to use WebKit as its rendering engine, which makes them all essentially wrappers around Safari.
Except in the EU, where lawmakers actually care about people and the concepts of freedom.
I’m not sure if Mozilla has an EU Gecko Firefox, but it would be nice if they did and it had feature parity with the Android version.
Edit: I looked it up and it looks like people are working on it but there’s no release date.
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Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
Akir Link ParentI agree we should be treating eachother more like friends. I’ve been thinking about starting a thread for organizing real-world meetups, but I’m not sure how open people would be to the idea.I agree we should be treating eachother more like friends. I’ve been thinking about starting a thread for organizing real-world meetups, but I’m not sure how open people would be to the idea.
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Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
Akir Link ParentThat wouldn’t solve the issues, it would just serve to make them less visible. In the past I have made posts about how people should show sympathy to fat people. They were recieved very...That wouldn’t solve the issues, it would just serve to make them less visible.
In the past I have made posts about how people should show sympathy to fat people. They were recieved very negatively. That’s a problem with this community, and as such I have not posted anything to that extent since. This is an issue in which I do not see possibly being “swept under the rug” in the way you are describing, but instead becoming dramatically worse.
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Comment on Epic Games Store will support Linux "soon" in ~games
Akir Link ParentI kind of think that people are also just getting fed up with Windows. Most of the people who I know who are technically proficient and are using Windows are doing it entirely because they are...I kind of think that people are also just getting fed up with Windows. Most of the people who I know who are technically proficient and are using Windows are doing it entirely because they are forced into it because it’s the only system supported by specific applications - often games - and uncommon specialty hardware. People hate the stupid things that Microsoft has forced them to accept, the dumb things they break and don’t fix, etc. On the other hand, the overall experience on desktop Linux systems just keeps getting better and better every single day, and even the old guard of Microsoft fanboys are starting to talk about Linux in a positive light. Epic and CD Projekt are probably just realizing that a growing portion of their potential customers have a barrier that’s preventing conversions.
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Comment on Elon Musk on tomatoes in ~food
Akir Link ParentBush might have been very well educated but educated does not equate to being “smart”. Bush did not have “intelligent” as part of his persona. I’m not sure he ever wanted to come across that way;...Bush might have been very well educated but educated does not equate to being “smart”. Bush did not have “intelligent” as part of his persona. I’m not sure he ever wanted to come across that way; his likability was built on the image of “a guy you’d like to have a beer with”, and that isn’t something you’d necessarily want to do with a rocket surgeon.
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Comment on Elon Musk on tomatoes in ~food
Akir Link ParentI’ve long learned that large swathes of the general public actually doesn’t appreciate when people are smarter than them. Especially if they are right-leaning. I mean, look at the president. Look...I’ve long learned that large swathes of the general public actually doesn’t appreciate when people are smarter than them. Especially if they are right-leaning. I mean, look at the president. Look at George Bush.
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Comment on How often are you eating plant based meals? in ~food
Akir Link ParentThat’s surprising! I actually don’t care for the flavors in most of them, which is why it’s mainly emergency food for me. I can definitely do better for taco fillings, for sure. The better option...That’s surprising! I actually don’t care for the flavors in most of them, which is why it’s mainly emergency food for me. I can definitely do better for taco fillings, for sure.
The better option is Hormel’s “Vegitarian” chili, which is accidentally vegan by the fact that it has no dairy either. It’s basically a can of no-beef chili with some TVP added in. The beans are so nice and creamy, and it has the same nostalgic Hormel chili flavor as their regular chili.
Is it just me or is online shopping just stupid these days?
I gave up impulse buying things online quite some time ago and canceled Prime not too long later. Shopping on Amazon now seems even more tumultuous now than it has ever been. Sometimes products don’t seem to actually have descriptions anymore, they just have summaries.
Relying on AI to purchase things for you is frankly the stupidest thing I could possibly imagine. It is counter to the entire point of online shopping - finding the best deals. AI does not know what these products are like. It has not held them in its hands. It doesn’t have human hands to begin with. Shopping is one of the most alien things you could ask it to do. You might as well ask it to evaluate your poetry recital.
But it seems to me that many online stores - Amazon is hardly the only one - aren’t so much in the business of retail as they are in the business of addiction marketing. They may have the things you need, but that’s just the in - it’s there to get you into the ecosystem that gets you addicted to buying cheap tat you don’t need.