Would you cancel a trip with your family that was already booked, that your mom completely planned out each activity in depth, that you already paid for, that you’ve been looking forward to, collectively, for over a year, because you found out you’d be contributing to a systemic problem for a week day?
You just might be a better person than me, at the end of the day.
I wasn’t sure whether hotels had already been booked or whether they cheaped out, that’s why I worded it like that. Could be.
No no you’re good, I didn’t take it that way. I think saying “next time” instead of “you should have” is a good way to help people realize that what they are doing might be destructive, without condemning them to the eternal pits of hell, so I appreciate you saying it that way.
I didn’t plan the trip myself, and I think there was some reason or another they chose AirBNB instead of a hotel. But yeah, if I ever do a trip like this again (unlikely), fuck an AirBNB
I’m going to Barcelona this week on a family trip. We’re staying in an AirBnb for a day. I think they’ve got a legitimate cause to spray people like me, who pretty much across the board don’t realize how much their privilege hurts regular working people.
I got an OLED the other day and splurged hard during the summer sale.
I got Stray and Little Kitty, Big City to show off to my cat-loving GF, and for me I got Dave the Diver, Sifu, and Babu is You. Also picked up Hollow Knight for good measure, but have yet to start it. 9 Sols, Mullet Madjack, Warhammer Boltgun, Baldurs Gate 3, and Return of the Obra Dinn all on my wishlist.
When are we going to protest. This is insanity.
Here is an excerpt from the dissent:
Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 246 (1944) (Jackson, J., dissenting). The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in ex- change for a pardon Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.
Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
The top comment on this thread contains a conversation (argument) about Chomsky’s view on the term “genocide,” as well as his verbiage discussing Serbian-run concentration camps.
I listened to Understanding Power fairly recently and it definitely changed my outlook and broke me out of the lull of neoliberal self-satisfaction, and helped introduce me to other leftist writers. So I’m a fan of Chomsky’s, but it doesn’t sound like he had that good of a take on the Bosnian genocide. He seems to only reserve the word genocide for the Holocaust so as to keep its significance, and despite supporting a UN fact-finding commission that did find Serbia was running concentration camps, he refers to said camps as “refugee camps,” instead, and seems to infer people had the freedom to stay or leave as they please (even if this was technically true, I doubt it was practically true).
So, not a good look for him, even though he had other viewpoints that I’ve been strongly influenced by.
Have you happened to read the book? He has a chapter dedicated to his decision to call it technofeudalism rather than capitalism, hypercapitalism, technocapitalism, etc. Basically he’s saying profits have been decoupled from a company’s value, and that it’s no longer about creating a product to exchange for profit (which, in his words, are beholden to market competition) but instead about extracting rent (which is not beholden to competition – his example is while a landowner’s neighbors increase the values of their properties, the landowner’s property value also increases).
Anyways he describes Amazon, Apple store, Google Play, cloud service providers, as fiefdoms that collect rent from actual producers of products (physical goods, but also applications), and don’t actually produce anything, themselves, besides access to customers, while also extracting value from users of their technologies through personal information. They’re effectively leasing consumer attention in the same way landowners leased their lands to workers.
It sounds pretty accurate to me, but I haven’t had much time to chew on it. What’s your take on that idea?
Sorry, buy-it-for-life
I kinda like the idea of a phone that is usually small, but I can make big by unfolding it if I want to. But I do agree that the fewer moving parts, the sturdier and more BIFL. It’s just that BIFL is not really attainable anyways in the current state of the phone market due to software support obsoletion.
I’d like to see a small eink phone or the tiny matchbook from Her.
I gotchu, it happens. No worries. You’ve definitely piqued my (admittedly gross) interest – I’m gonna do some more research after work and I’ll look out for your link.
Good luck on zoom!
That’s not very nice to say. I’m not being obtuse – the writers of the article you linked it even said themselves they were surprised that the bidet-users had more fecal matter. I don’t poop on my bidet, and regularly clean it. You’d think that the jet of water plus wiping would get more fecal matter off your butt rather than wiping, alone. Dang. I’m just trying to have a conversation.
Can you post the link to that study? I wanna read it. Here’s one that says almost the opposite:
Normal use of the bidet toilet by pregnant women poses no clinical health risk for preterm birth and bacterial vaginosis.
Curious why you feel its absurd people need to be told this? Even in the the study you linked, they note in the discussion
It is of great surprise to find that detection of fecal bacteria was prejudiced against the bidet toilet users.
Still a concerning study to me, since I’m a habitual bidet user. Fortunately I don’t need to worry about vaginal microflora. Furthermore, I could only find this one small study that shows correlation (not necessarily causation), so I’d be hesitant to immediately regard bidets as less sanitary than wiping, especially for men.
Canobie Lake Park
Dang, so weird seeing a local shoutout here. Canobie and Story Land were part of my childhood.
I didn’t think about it as a dog whistle, but I’m sure it is. That is me being ignorant. I’m not trying to use it in that fashion. It’s not right he owned slaves. Once again, my main point is that he was not completely okay with slavery, as the original person I responded to was asserting.
You’re getting into his role in drafting laws, which I havent commented on because I simply don’t know, off the top of my head, what is attributed to him besides much of the original Constitution. I can only guess in regards to that, and I would guess that, being a white man, he considered and heavily favored the interests of other white men in the drafting of laws, and is responsible for much of the inequity we still see today.
By the way, Nike has been accused of utilizing forced labor in the past.
I mean, I never said it was okay he had slaves. It’s obviously monstrous. And yes, it was cowardly not to be public with his private opinions on the matter. My whole point is Jefferson was not completely okay with slavery, although evidently he was okay enough to own slaves (depending on your viewpoint, that make your opinion of him either better or worse), and that he didn’t fuck a bunch of his slaves.
Edit: And i suppose that contradicts my Nike comparison (hence why I emphasized “softly” there). Still, I’d say Jefferson was a product of his time and place, for the worse.
Edit2: actually no, it doesn’t really. My point was that a person can be uncomfortable with a thing (Nike’s labor practices) and still perpetuate it because of the just vast vast acceptance during the time
I didn’t say you stated them. The person above did – the person I originally responded to. When I say “If you’re going to invoke history…” I mean, “If a person is going to invoke history.” Maybe I should have been clearer there.
I personally don’t believe Boles sanitized Jefferson’s biography. Again, I think he did a good job of outlining his life without letting him off the hook. It’s cool you’ve been to Monticello, and that you know about Jefferson. But if a person is looking for a fair depiction of Jefferson, is that really the place to go? I mean, certainly slaves were the ones who built up that place. I’ve never been, so I can’t say for sure that they (the curators) don’t condemn Jefferson in the way that you’d like, so doesn’t that point kind of undermine your argument? Hey, I’ve never been, so I don’t know. I’d guess Monticello is just as likely or more to have sanitized Jefferson’s life than Boles’ book.
And sure, there were people that opposed slavery centuries before Jefferson. But I’d wager to guess they were in the minority (ie, not the prevailing notion) considering there was an entire industry revolving around the slave trade during Jefferson’s time, consisting of more than just two individuals.
Edit: Sorry, this doesnt really cover your entire comment because of your edits, but yeah I think the general jist is that we disagree about the level of Jefferson’s “alrightness” with slavery. I mean, yeah he’s totally a hypocrite, and you could argue it makes him worse that he acknowledge slavery was wrong, but still perpetuated it. I’m hesitant to do that, because of the time and place that he lived.
I’d very very VERY softly compare it to the fact that today, we know Nike has bad labor practices. Am I going to condemn everyone I know who wears a Nike product? Probably not.
Always a relevant
xkcdTerry Pratchett quote