I think the notion that certain traits are normalized or even praised is spot on.

I just finished rings of power and the picture of sauron as the great deceiver who even deceives himself at times is harrowing. I have been very successful in business and met people just like him. The higher i got the more obvious.

People who lie without any change in tone or rhythm, who are incredibly fast and enthusiastic explaining away your absolutely spot on criticisms and fears without as much as breaking a sweat.

These people also have been incredibly unreliable, never due to their own fault of course. They just swish away any competition by any means necessary. And they are impulsive as hell. They just lose it if you dont comply.

On one hand, I really sympathize with people who suffer from the condition i just described traits of. It is impossible for me to say how to act on this without massive discrimination against people with this condition although I see dire need to exclude these traits from any positions of power.

Because if they run unrestrained and even praised, this is how you get genocidal maniacs as rulers of countries. Its these people at the root of every major downfall of our society.

Massive fraud and banking collapse: these traits. Building software to supercharge rents to efficiently drain the public: these traits, it is everywhere.

No idea. In my opinion the law and computer code are very similar. Its the people working to make and interpret it who bring in variation, for good and bad.

I mean thats great. Bluesky is still just another billinaire walled garden.

And for the people with internet, tv, radio or access to newspapers:

the police can make you look at the camera to unlock your phone (for example to check if you’re aiding refugees from the ethnic lgbtq cleansing) but they cant (easily and in some countries legally) force you to type in a pin and password. I know the point is a bit moot for a pc as at that point the will just rip out your drive, assuming its not encrypted.

Still, worth mentioning imo.

Lemmy cant. It has a clear cut sorting strategy which is open source. Assuming we’re talking about actual suggestions which are based on something else than most upvotes, most downvotes, most upvotes per time.

They sell your eyes and your mind.

We should hang out sometime. You sound pleasant! :)

You hit the nail on the head.

Now you need to be able to counter the manipulation happening every day through media, other people, etc.

A decade ago I stopped watching TV. Everyone asked me why. I said I‘m not watching commercials. Guess what I do with platforms that push ads!

We really need to talk about outlawing commercials that arent pure product information. Good looking guy gets chased by beautiful women when using *** bodyspray? Cue moron: „but its sarcasm, duh!“ no its not. Not for your subconcious. It is manipulation.

Btw I was trained by a psychologist (a guy paid by the car company, who is a licensed therapist and has a licensed practice) to manipulate people into buying cars. Not through arguments or superior manufacturing but pure tone of voice, using familiar wording, analyzing their weak points. This stuff is dark. Needless to say I dont do that job anymore. No amount of money is worth manipulating people into buying stuff they dont need.

This shit needs to go if we want to live free at some point (let alone make it through fascism and a planet on fire).

That would be a great solution. Another would be to put quotas of employees, customers, owners and the community (people living around a plant for example) in there. Just an idea though.

Two things can be true at once:

1. valve so far took tremendous care of the people using their product. They have outclassed afaik every other billion dollar company in the world in terms of listening to their customers and not exploiting them to hell (as others do).
2. billionaire companies are cancer. If gabe ever gives up valve (through death or whatever), we are at the mercy of a monopolist that can extract as much as they want.

My conclusion: force companies to behave like valve does now, but forever. Let them make money without exploiting people. And in case if valve: break any monopoly.

Down with shareholder value.

You first.

Jokes like these leave me with a sour taste because this is what you‘d do if you wanted to manipulate people onto complacency. Good to read that folks dont like the idea.

My personal opinion is twofold:

1. they need a diversion. Like a magician (or more accurate a pickpocket) they will take anything to make people blind while they amass their power. It is a sickness of the mind. They are addicted to power and ever anxious to loose it. Minorities are a good enemy for the people to blame the problems on that these people either cause themselves or dont want to take care of. In the past it was witches, nowadays it is other minorities.
2. minorities have been fighting for a place in the world for a long time and there have been significant improvements. But that is not a positive development if you want to rule supreme. If you‘re power crazed, you need people to fall in line. Otherwise it wont work. We have ample evidence that only a sufficiently subdued population will not rise up against authority.

Depends on what you hope to find. Generally, independent media will show you the most complete picture. The taz in germany and 404 media are both pretty good afaik.

The conclusion that the US is a threat to democracy has evolved over time. Their financing of the genocide in gaza, their intervention in irak and other countries they had no right to intervene in, the first trump admin which cost millions of americans their lives and now the second one in the process of (allegedly) dismantling the government system alltogether. together with mass deportations and simple deletion of trans people from government docs. Oh and pardonning the insurectionists from jan 6th. No idea what follows.

There are a lot of sources for this stuff but you will have to draw your own conclusion.

In germany, a couple peeps agree that china is becoming the better option for living. Both, the US and china are bad actors and enemies to democracy and freedom but at this point, the differences have become technicalities while the US has become more unstable and dangerous to its citizens.

You dont even need special nvme‘s. You can buy mid range ones.

Best is if they dont fail together so they should best not be the same batch or have the same age and write amount.

I do highly recommend to have a raid array for any server ssd since they fail unpredicably and without any signs.

I‘m building this for some time now. I run a raid 1 on mechanical disks for file storage and have an ssd for the logic/database stuff. Have bought a second ssd and will put them in a raid as well bc limited lifespan.

I would agree if there wasnt a giant hole in your reasoning.

Once you stopped paying, „your“ library evaporated. It isnt that you rent out individual games. You have whole libraries built just from that.

And please dont go into the „gamers responsibility“. Thats an ableist view. Lots of gamers are underage and/or unable to make basic decisions especially against dark patterns and social pressure. Education and laws to limit exposure to this toxic stuff needs to happen, period.

I know this is going to backfire: gamepass is convenient but every person subscribing fuels the toxic „rentseeking culture“ of capitalists worldwide. Some would say that its much better to pirate than to use this shit. Besides: it is technologically subpar and surely privacy invasive.

This is as inspiring as it is terrifying.