mycorrhiza they/them

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Animal Farm

    The plot reads like a sunday school scare piece to warn children about the dangers of satanism. It’s so vague and allegorical that you can’t really critique it. The message is basically “if you revolt against the capitalists, a scary bad man will take over and hurt you.” Also pretty disgusting that it portrays workers as farm animals and capitalists as humans. It’s a very “American schools during the Cold War would make kids read that” kind of book.

    It’s not surprising that Orwell was a bigoted snitch who ratted leftists out to British intelligence, and was especially keen on turning in jews, black people, homosexuals, and anyone he deemed “anti-white.”

    https://bennorton.com/george-orwell-list-leftists-snitch-british-government/

    I’ll also throw in Asimov’s review of 1984 while I’m ranting about this creep

    http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm

    framework for statecraft

    I kinda give side-eye to anyone really fond of the word statecraft. It’s sort of an “I look up to a lot of neoliberal ghouls” shibboleth.










  • The Sapply model runs into the exact same problem the video is focusing on.

    When you take the quiz at https://sapplyvalues.github.io you get questions like “Agree or disagree: Only the government can fairly and effectively regulate organizations” — but what kind of government are we talking about? Who’s in charge? Are there corporate think tanks running it? Is there a fossil fuel lobby? Are we talking about corporations regulating themselves?

    When I get a question like that, I don’t know how to respond, because I don’t have a blanket attitude toward all government. My opinion depends on what is actually happening in real life. Which is ultimately the central criticism of the video. What matters most to most people is the material context, not some blanket feeling about the abstract concept of government





  • of Google, not Youtube

    That’s my whole point! Google can afford it. Even if YouTube showed zero ads and earned zero revenue Google could afford it.

    If I want to support a small creator, I donate. I don’t feel bad about hurting the bottom line of one of the highest-earning companies in the world.

    Even if YouTube runs at a deficit, it’s probably worthwhile for Google to control the main video hosting hub on the internet and keep competition out of the game.

    So does shipping, etc.

    Spending on shipping or manufacturing is a lot less discretionary than spending on advertising. You have broad leeway to advertise less or more, and past a certain point the main requirement is that you advertise as well as your competition. If Google shows fewer ads across the board, even half as many ads, you’re still in business.

    What is your proposed alternative?

    If you want to talk real life, they’re already raking in $60 billion a year in profit so I see no need for an alternative. If you want to talk hypotheticals, I think central back-end infrastructure like Google’s servers — and the data we put on them — should be publicly owned, with an open-source marketplace of front-end services we can use to access it. We should be able to browse YouTube with whatever site interfaces and suggestion algorithms we find most useful, not the ones most profitable to Google.

    Blackrock owns 5% of Tesla

    Blackrock’s clients own 5% of Tesla.

    Blackrock dies tomorrow if they do anything other than what their clients expect of them. The sole purpose of Blackrock is to invest rich people’s money and maximize returns for them while managing risk. They have some leeway in how they do this, but only up to a point. They’re very good at what they do but they are ultimately replaceable.