When I was a kid my mother’s boyfriend bragged of doing exactly this. He heard them having a conversation in another language at a gas station, approached them, and started speaking to them in German. When they were confused he allegedly said exactly the phrase. You are in America, speak English. He thought it was hysterical.

He may have been full of shit, but the fact that he felt it worth bragging about said enough about him.

As another IT guy here, it could also be a shitty method of analysis that he got from ChaptGPT. As an amateur coder/script writer, the kinds of code I’ve seen people use from these bots is disturbing. One of my coworkers asked me for help after trying to cobble together something from bots. There were variables declared and never used, variables that were never assigned values but that were used in expressions… it was like it attempted to do that ransom note made from magazine letters but they couldn’t spell coherently.

Pet ownership is inherently selfish and self-deluded,

I can see that perspective and I don’t totally disagree. Dogs and cats (which are devastating to local ecosystems), seeming to be explicitly domesticated animals with no place in the wild, are potential special cases. The only alternative in my mind would be to neuter/spay the lot of them and that seems just as fucked up as owning them… so that’s honestly not really something I care to get into. I haven’t spent much time thinking about that topic.

pet owners cannot be expected to be responsible.

That’s a statement with insanely broad implications. Replace pet owners with “gun owners” or “drivers of cars” or “airline pilots”. It’s a subset of people that are not so special that they cannot be made responsible. Anyone with the capacity to understand and who is of sound mind can be expected to be responsible if society holds them to that standard.

Unless your point is to reiterate your objection to having a pet being irresponsible, in which case… ok.

WE LICENSE THOSE ACTIVITIES

Honestly, I’d be perfectly fine with more strict licensing of pets. Technically, my region does license dogs but it’s more of a system to make sure you vaccinate them and a fee to help fund pet-related efforts like animal and rabies control.

My only concern is that the licensing body needs to be robust and funded well enough to not pass an unreasonable cost onto applicants… which I feel applies to pretty much any licensing system.

Two of my friends that ended up with rescues that were mostly pitbull had to go through a whole process with several visits and interviews and a follow up some time after the rescue was placed in their custody. That was the rescue agency though not a licensing body.

…and how many neighborhoods, insurance companies, etc have rules against pitbulls?

There is no way that the full picture of breed ownership is tainted by purposely reporting the breed as one that wouldn’t cause the owner to pay more for insurance, get dropped by insurance, kicked out of their rental unit, etc?

Most of the dogs I know have significant amounts of pitbull in their blood. Their owners are not pitbull fanatics - they just rescued a dog from a service and found out it was 50+% pitbull. The one friend who has close to pure (90+%) pitbulls literally rescued them from the streets. Like found the dog with no tags and no chip somewhere near where they live, spent weeks advertising to find its owner, and decided to keep it when no owner surfaced.

Even if they were psychologically identical to every other dog

That’s literally my point - they basically are. I won’t argue that pitbulls are more capable of harming someone due to their physical characteristics. That’s just physics.

Horses are also large, powerful animals and they cause at least a few deaths every year by trampling or kicking humans when provoked, spooked, startled, or whatever - I’m not really a horse person. Obviously, large powerful animals can absolutely cause more damage than lap-sized animals. That doesn’t mean they are the equivalent of a monster from a horror movie that could rip someone to shreds at any moment with no provocation. Not does it mean that anyone who owns one is an irresponsible, naive threat to society.

If you are a responsible owner, the dog or horse isn’t an unreasonable danger.

Sorry you feel personally attacked when someone says pitbulls are dangerous.

I don’t feel personally attacked, but many other people feel personally attacked when someone questions their opinion on pitbulls. I just feel bad for the animals.

Ah yes, I see. You have made assertions that align with the typical narrative and stereotype around a breed of dogs, then demonstrated the assertion’s validity by stating it is a belief held in your neighborhood.

I have completely changed my mind and will now ignore all of my own experiences and knowledge on the topic because a random person asserted a stereotype and stated that people believe and act on a stereotype. I guess that’s it. Debate over.

None of them have kids, but I’ve spent a lot of time around my friends and their dogs. They are just dogs. Many of them are extremely affectionate. When I was a kid my family had a German Shepherd with showdog lineage and my mother had a lifetime of experience of owning and training dogs. Our shepherd exhibited substantially more aggression than any of my friends’ pitbulls.

Yes, big, strong dogs can do more harm than smaller dogs and pitbulls can be big and strong. That does make them capable of being more dangerous if something goes wrong. I can’t argue with that. However, the mentality is that pitbulls are inherently violent or behave violently by natur is what I call bullshit on.

Pitbulls are regarded as dangerous and vicious. They are also abused and subjected to fighting by their owners because that is their reputation. It’s so fucked up. Then, bad owners want a scary dog, treat it poorly, don’t train it and when it acts like any mistreated, traumatized animal would the world declares it inherently violent. There is such a thing as a self fulfilling prophecy.

Hell, one friend has a pit mix that is like < 30 lbs, full grown. I’ve never seen it do anything any other dog wouldn’t do. Still, he’s extremely careful with it because of the prejudice people have against the breed. Once I was hiking with him and another man with his own dog crossed our path. My friend stepped off the path and kept the dog seated and on a short leash in an attempt to reassure the guy well before he got close to us. The guy immediately asked my friend if his dog was a pitbull and berated him as he passed, furious that my friend would be irresponsible enough to own a pitbull.

Many of the people in this thread remind me of that man.

Another story. One of my coworkers paid thousands of dollars in vet bills for their neighbor in order to stop them from trying to get my coworkers dog put down (and it wasn’t one of those “scary” breeds). All because the neighbors small, aggressive dog charged the bigger dog. In its attempt to get away, the bigger dog scrambled and accidentally stepped on the smaller dog and injured it. A poorly trained, off leash small dog almost cost a perfectly average dog it’s life because the owners didn’t bother to restrain it… but the bad owners made out in the end.

One last story. I was hiking with the tankiest, strongest pitbull of all the ones I know. This guy doesn’t want anything to do with other dogs. It’s not aggressive - it’s frightened. We came across another hiker with their dog… the hiker said his dog was friendly and my friend immediately stated that their dog wasn’t interested in making new friends. The hiker ignored the statement and let go of their dog’s leash, letting the dog rush the pitbull tank barking and running circles around it. The pitbull panicked and couldn’t get away and my friend had to try to keep the other dog away from the pitbull for the pitbull’s sake. No harm was done beyond a poor, stressed out pitbull and a pissed off friend.

Should pitbulls exist? I’m indifferent, especially when it comes to purebreds. That doesn’t mean that I want them exterminated or left to rot in shelters. Just let dogs be dogs. Try to make sure puppies come out healthy and worry less about whether they look the way you want them to.

Because their stereotype can attract shitty owners who want a badass dog but can’t be assed to train or care for them.

Or they literally abuse, possibly even with dogfights, and abandon them.

I’m not an owner I’m but someone with a lot of friends that own pitbulls. Pitbulls aren’t some magically special, dangerous breed that is prone to random acts of violence.

I would say enforcement never prevents any crime and enforcement is about punishment not prevention. So when is it worth it? What level totalitarianism an authoritarianism is worth it? How much abuse and Injustice is necessary to assuage your fears about the other? Surely you’re not going to sit here and tell me only fear of punishment is what stops you from murdering people?

What if we focused on resolving systemic issues that might provide motivation to prevent crime? What if we focused on rehabilitation instead of punishment for those that commit crimes anyway?

Sure, you can take any idea to an extreme strawman and shriek things like “authoritarianism!” but that means nothing.

It’s important that while we are looking for solutions for the now that we also reflect on how it could have been prevented. If this is burned into our memories, maybe next time someone that represents us gains power we’ll force them to prevent something similar from happening again in the future.

Just reiterating what others have said but… if you have an IP you like and want more of it in the future (regardless of medium!) then its success in any other medium will likely impact whether or not you get more.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where:

• Money matters more to most IP holders than the IP itself

• New IP is seen as risky

• Those in charge don’t have to take responsibility for their failures

If there is a commercial failure of an IP, there is a good chance that its failure will be seen as the IP generally failing or falling out of poluarity instead of the failure to best utilize the IP that likely occurred. As a result, priorities will often shift away from the IP to something else in all mediums (ex. ASOIAF/GOT). Unless the IP is absolutely gangbusters in all other mediums, it will suffer. Similarly, success will likely lead to more utilization of the IP in any medium.

It’s unlikely that the IP owner will sell or license the IP in the near future because at one point it was popular and new IP is hard to make. It would be better to hoard IP and maybe try again in a decade when they need a trick up their sleeve. Plus, another failure might damage the IP even more.

Admittedly, I’m not attached to any brands or IP in particular and so I’m not invested really. I just makes me a little sad when some IP I thought well of has this happen… or when the person who benefits from the IP turns out to be a person I’d rather not give money to. Occasionally I’ll ponder what might have been if things had gone differently and feel a little bad.

the same process

It doesn’t necessarily involve the middle man, who is ultimately the bigger fish that enshittifiers are looking to land. I think that’s relevant. Enshittification’s process involves capturing both a “retail” user base and a business user base and then squeezing both.

Edit. Enshittification is layered and more specific to industries and markets that are not inherently profitable. It starts with seed money being burned for that initial user base and fucks over everyone up and down the chain because the business is not really profitable otherwise. Skimp/shrinkflation is more about squeezing more profit than you are already making.

I’ve see it used a lot recently to describe the general degradation of quality in service of increasing profits. I think technically, it is not enshittification. Below is my general definition of the process enshittification describes. Repost from another comment.

1. Attract users/customers with high quality services/products to create a captive/dependent user base.
2. Attract business customers (ex. advertisers or businesses that can benefit from access to the user base in some way) by offering them high value services by fucking over your captive user base create a captive/dependent busiess customer base.
3. Fuck over your captive business customers to increase your own profit.

A word that includes the word “shit” in it has a very nice ring to it when describing things getting generally shittier in favor of profit. I suppose language can evolve rapidly and things mean what people believe them to mean.

Edit: As per Wikipedia’s Shrinkflation Entry:

Skimpflation involves a reformulation or other reduction in quality.

I see skimpflation as a form of shrinkflation. The idea is still that the price stays the same but to try and hide the cost increase from the customer they give you less. I guess fewer strawberries per “smoothie” is even more subtle than fewer ounces of the original “smoothie” formula per bottle.

To be a pedantic asshole, technically enshittification is meant to refer to online services that follow an inevitable process of…

1. Attract users/customers with high quality services/products to create a captive/dependent user base.
2. Attract business customers (ex. advertisers or businesses that can benefit from access to the user base in some way) by offering them high value services by fucking over your captive user base create a captive/dependent busiess customer base.
3. Fuck over your captive business customers to increase your own profit.

Admittedly, I see enshittification used colloquially meaning basically “business found a way to fuck over its customers more than usual to increase their profit”. Perhaps that is what you mean by “General enshittification”.

Most big game corps just shutter studios, usually letting them know via the grapevine after a board meeting or twitter post…

Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices

Assuming you are in the USA, it’s fundamentally because our politics is fueled by private money. The “haves” spend lots of money to make rules that protect and enrich themselves at the expense of the “have nots”. The rich get richer, and the rest of us get a larger share of the burden.

The rich then spend more of their money convincing everyone else that some minority group of their fellow “have nots” are to blame and let us fight amongst ourselves. They starve us but leave us with just enough left to lose so that the price of doing something about it is too high (quitting, losing health insurance, getting arrested at a protest, etc) for most of us to bear.

how can we change this?

Get money out of politics. Get the public to stop blaming their fellow have nots and demand change from the haves.

How does one person even start to address these issues?

Have empathy for and help your neighbors if you can, especially when they take the risks required to push for actual change. Talk to people. Organize. Support/start unions or a mutual aid organization. Go to local government meetings and make your voice heard. Run for local office.

Its easy for a small group of wealthy organizations to tilt specific elections or politics in their favor. It’s much harder them to do that in 1,000+ small communities across the nation.

In maybe third grade I brought my collection of x-men trading cards as part of a sort of show and tell activity. It was in a sizable three-ring binder with those 3x3 slot cars sheets. I had a number of highly valued “foil/hologram” cards. The binder was gone when I got back from lunch. I was devastated and learned to never leave anything of value not locked up if I’m not watching it.

At work we have a kitchen/break room. I’ve had shit stolen from there a lot. Utensils, cups, bowls. Wash it after lunch, put it in the drying rack, come back in an hour to get it and it’s gone. Once my department had a leftover pizza from an event donated to us. I brought in a baking sheet to reheat it in the oven for a lunch morale boost for the team because we had to work that weekend. The sheet, left in a drawer and not visible to any casual observers, was gone by Monday. That was actually the first item I’d had stolen there but I thought I was just s fluke.

I’ve literally bought upgrades and utensil sets for the kitchen (maybe people “stealing” my utensils just forgot to bring a fork, borrowed mine, and brought it home by accident?). Stuff like drying towels, soap dispensers + large refill bottles, a microwave food cover… all stolen. I’d keep getting frustrated with, for example, people leaving the sponge wet in the sink. I’d think “its been a year since I last donated something, maybe it’ll be different this time…” and I’d buy an OXO sponge holder or something and within a week it would be gone. Everyone in my office, including secretaries and cleaning staff, gets paid at least a living wage with great health benefits. Some make well over 100k. I just imagine someone making twice my salary seeing a nice soap dispenser and taking it home… lost a good bit of faith in humanity and affected me way more than it should have.

I found a solution though. Whoever was stealing this shit couldn’t deal with the shame of being reminded that they stole it. I started labeling the donated items using my organization’s acronym with a permanent marker in big visible letters. None of that’s been stolen. I was going to engrave my utensils/dishes but decided instead to look like an asshole and bring my own towel when washing my dishes, drying them immediately, and taking them back to my desk immediately.

[How] do you think Trump, with the powers newly granted to the office he’s again running for, will act in his second term?

There could have been better worlds

So… because Trump didn’t get unhinged to the point where he started a nuclear war, you aren’t worried.

• How did you feel about refusing to concede in the 2020 election and creating uncertainty and doubt about the electoral process among a not insignificant minority of voters?

• How about inciting an angry mob to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th?

• How did you feel about hoarding and hiding classified documents so that he could show them off to impress his friends and guests? Maybe even sell them if times are tough?

• How about strong-arming the Republican party and installing his family to run it?

• How do you feel about how his SCOTUS has changed the fundamentals of the US government?

• The Chevron deference?

• Bribery?

• Presidential “immunity” for official acts?

• How do you feel about the loss of the right to have an abortion?

Do you think Trump, with the powers newly granted to the office he’s again running for, will act in his second term? Where is your line?