Akir's recent activity

  1. Irreverent ads make me want to buy things even less

    ~talk Ask
    Lately on YouTube I’ve been getting a few really weird ads. The first was a 5 second spot video for Fatty brand meat sticks. They say “vegans look away” as they spin on the screen. I’m...

    Lately on YouTube I’ve been getting a few really weird ads.

    The first was a 5 second spot video for Fatty brand meat sticks. They say “vegans look away” as they spin on the screen.

    I’m plant-based: I don’t eat animal products 99.9% of the time. And well before I was like this I wouldn’t have eaten their product because meat sticks were just simply gross. But literally every time I see an advertisement for a food product I see something that looks more like actual meat on the screen so when I see the ad in question, it is basically the single most flaccid insult I have ever seen.

    I wouldn’t even be bringing it up except for today I had a different ad show up from dbrand, this time as an image as I was looking through the recommended videos. It was a screenshot of a conversation between them and peta over some leather something or other.

    I just think about what this kind of advertising is supposed to do. It’s supposed to position the product in a persons mind. It says to them “buy this to stick it to those leftist vegan cucks” while still being soft enough that a leftist vegan cuck might not be bothered by it and might still consider buying it.

    But I think there is a different message we should take from these ads: these companies are run by assholes. The fact that leather and meat require animals to die is a morbid fact that our society has accepted, and rubbing that into the faces of those who disagree with it is not a good look; it just reveals them as the children that they are.

    While my dietary restrictions may have prevented me from buying anything from Fatty, the only thing stopping me from buying from dbrand is their own idiotic marketing. Why on earth did they think that they think that their trolling would be effective advertising outside of the trolling website?

    31 votes

  2. Comment on Ultima Online retrospective | The last hurrah in ~games

    Akir
    Link Parent
    That series got me to play that game, and I'm really glad I did. It's an incredible game (when you can play it with save states and cheat the hell out of it). Shadow Tower: Abyss is even better.

    That series got me to play that game, and I'm really glad I did. It's an incredible game (when you can play it with save states and cheat the hell out of it). Shadow Tower: Abyss is even better.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    It’s obvious isn’t it? If you are on vacation and your roommate drinks your milk, your refrigerator can log it and you can then choose to reverse the loop, heating the contents and destroying all...

    It’s obvious isn’t it? If you are on vacation and your roommate drinks your milk, your refrigerator can log it and you can then choose to reverse the loop, heating the contents and destroying all the food and maybe even their medications. That’s gonna teach them their lesson!

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Paramount settles with California, other states over Warner Bros merger in ~movies

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I am so fucking pissed off that we have two fucking voter initiatives on the ballot this years specifically put in place just to invalidate the billionaire tax - the one that's actually a...

    I am so fucking pissed off that we have two fucking voter initiatives on the ballot this years specifically put in place just to invalidate the billionaire tax - the one that's actually a grassroots effort. And they're going to have much longer effects that will hobble the California legislature, potentially forever.

    "Eat the rich" might actually be too kind of a sentiment at this point. They are poisonously evil.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Paramount settles with California, other states over Warner Bros merger in ~movies

    Akir
    Link Parent
    The US isn't really much better anymore. The telcos keep buying eachother with very little consequence. I'm literally right between two of the most densely populated counties in California and yet...

    The US isn't really much better anymore. The telcos keep buying eachother with very little consequence. I'm literally right between two of the most densely populated counties in California and yet there is only a single terrestrial (read: non-wireless) internet provider who can service my address. According to Claude, at least, high speed internet seems to be notably cheaper in Canada than in the US!

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Amazon plans drone expansion as top exec projects one million deliveries in ~tech

    Akir
    Link
    Does anyone live in an area serviced by a drone delivery service - Amazon or otherwise? It seems somewhat… optimistic. Amazon seems to have been pushing this idea for a very long time and I have...

    Does anyone live in an area serviced by a drone delivery service - Amazon or otherwise? It seems somewhat… optimistic. Amazon seems to have been pushing this idea for a very long time and I have yet to see anything come of it anywhere in my major metropolitan area.

    5 votes

  7. Comment on Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I will bet you a nonzero amount of money that in order to use the features of the fridge users were forced to click through a terms of use agreement which included a binding arbitration and class...

    I will bet you a nonzero amount of money that in order to use the features of the fridge users were forced to click through a terms of use agreement which included a binding arbitration and class action waiver clauses.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges in ~tech

    Akir
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    IIRC both Westinghouse and whirlpool are both completely defunct in the United States and are both just brands licensed to Haier, a Chinese appliance manufacturer. Edit: actually maybe they don’t...

    IIRC both Westinghouse and whirlpool are both completely defunct in the United States and are both just brands licensed to Haier, a Chinese appliance manufacturer.

    I have a lot of respect for Haier these days. They don’t try to reinvent the wheel and they aren’t trying to make everything controllable only through apps or AI, most of the time.

    Edit: actually maybe they don’t do that last part.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    We own an LG refrigerator. I really didn't want to buy one because they already have a bad name for their fridges. It has their "ThinQ" AI technology and I have already told my husband I will...

    We own an LG refrigerator. I really didn't want to buy one because they already have a bad name for their fridges. It has their "ThinQ" AI technology and I have already told my husband I will murder him if he ever enables it, especially considering that LG is a company who really really likes spying on it's customers.

    12 votes

  10. Comment on Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Their TVs were not that great either. Tizen was very buggy. It takes talent to make Linux unreliable. Honestly when it comes to phones I came to the conclusion that it was less of a function of...

    Their TVs were not that great either. Tizen was very buggy. It takes talent to make Linux unreliable.

    Honestly when it comes to phones I came to the conclusion that it was less of a function of Samsung being good and more of a function of everyone else being terrible in comparison.

    12 votes

  11. Comment on In fighting for every black child, did I forget my own? in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    100,000 times more negativity is still 100,000 times more negativity.

    100,000 times more negativity is still 100,000 times more negativity.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on In fighting for every black child, did I forget my own? in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I suppose so. It’s just the overwhelming volume.

    I suppose so. It’s just the overwhelming volume.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I’m of much the same opinion as you. I’m still very much pissed off at Google for promising that my device would get access to the Play Store and simply never delivering it. Beyond that, simply...

    I’m of much the same opinion as you. I’m still very much pissed off at Google for promising that my device would get access to the Play Store and simply never delivering it. Beyond that, simply chrooting the device to install Firefox on early ChromeOS gave massive performance boosts because Chrome was and still is a massive memory hog and doesn’t really make sense for devices of the caliber that they put them on (which can still have as little as 4GB). Which I guess is fine for Googlebooks?

    Pretty much everything Google has done since roughly the year 2008 has been to burn any and all of the goodwill they had built with me in the years before, and my trust has long burnt out. That play store thing is probably the thing that did it; they just stayed silent about the issue and the support period has ended so it’s just never going to happen.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Mindful posting in ~society

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I have yet to ever login to bluesky, but let me give you this quick thought experiment. You are a politician and you are trying to gather popular sentiment on an issue quickly. You go online and...

    I have yet to ever login to bluesky, but let me give you this quick thought experiment. You are a politician and you are trying to gather popular sentiment on an issue quickly. You go online and find 20 well reasoned takes for one side. On the other you find one or two well reasoned takes… and 20,000 poorly reasoned ones. Which one do you support?

    You don’t even have to be a politician for this to be important. People take sides by repetition of ideas. This is often how right wing ideology spreads even when the ideas are harmful.

    As a human being you need to advocate for yourself, even if you are bad at it! It’s the only way to get things done. Yes, you should try to get better at it. But you know how you get better at it? Trying.

    6 votes

  15. Comment on I'm not sure disinfo campaigns on X still work in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Where do you see this happen, seriously? I am pretty selective about which news sources I consume but the only time I see X being cited is when the story involves groups that congregate on the...

    Where do you see this happen, seriously?

    I am pretty selective about which news sources I consume but the only time I see X being cited is when the story involves groups that congregate on the platform.

    If you are seeing stories citing random nobodies you should seriously not only be rejecting the story, but the entire outlet. Clearly there is something wrong with their editorial standards.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Mindful posting in ~society

    Akir
    Link
    Honestly this might be the single most misguided piece of writing that I have ever seen. Let’s not advocate for ourselves on social media because… we’re no good at it? In fact we are so bad at it...

    Honestly this might be the single most misguided piece of writing that I have ever seen. Let’s not advocate for ourselves on social media because… we’re no good at it? In fact we are so bad at it we might get people to do the opposite of what we want! Spooky!

    Honestly it seems to me like the kind of psychotic thing that only the influencer type would be able to write: the author talks about “followers” instead of friends. They aren’t writing for you and me - people who are posting to their social media to communicate with people and communities they care about - they are writing for the influenzati, the people wrestling for attention and clout and brand deals and advertising dollars. At least that’s the impression that I get.

    5 votes

  17. Comment on In fighting for every black child, did I forget my own? in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I can’t get back in there right now because there is a service outage where I am and I refuse to log in on my phone, but do you not see people dogpiling on the author for not prioritizing her...

    I can’t get back in there right now because there is a service outage where I am and I refuse to log in on my phone, but do you not see people dogpiling on the author for not prioritizing her daughter over her ideals, shaming her for narcissism for publicizing her daughter’s struggles, and ideas from the narrative being taken out of context and being misrepresented?

    1 vote

  18. Comment on Xbox: continuing our reset [update on Xbox game studio closures] in ~games

    Akir
    Link Parent
    There’s a part of me hoping that Microsoft is planning on having Obsidian take over Bethesda from the inside.

    There’s a part of me hoping that Microsoft is planning on having Obsidian take over Bethesda from the inside.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on In fighting for every black child, did I forget my own? in ~life

    Akir
    Link
    Just as an aside to this, I occasionally peruse through r/truereddit and came across this article there, where they did not like it very much. And let that be another reminder of why not to go to...

    Just as an aside to this, I occasionally peruse through r/truereddit and came across this article there, where they did not like it very much.

    And let that be another reminder of why not to go to that website.

    3 votes

  20. Comment on AI abundance requires a four-hour workweek in ~tech

    Akir
    Link
    What's the point about framing this around AI? This is a problem around capital in general. What the author is looking for is communism, or at the very least some form of socialism. They are...

    What's the point about framing this around AI? This is a problem around capital in general. What the author is looking for is communism, or at the very least some form of socialism. They are fundamentally talking about wealth redistribution!

    21 votes