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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I found the whole ‘cake day’ thing on Reddit a bit immature myself, kind of like a stale remnant from the excitement and exuberance of the internet before it was dominated by a few massive companies.

    By the time i left reddit my feelings towards those traditions were like yours. They seemed a bit hollow, over-egged.

    Times have changed, Lemmy and its user-base are a reaction to the dominant internet campanies. With that i’d hope we can be more thoughtful about building an online experience thats healthy and sober.

    To that point, i think marking an anniversary has a certain importance. I’d hope on Lemmy this kind of thing is approached with a more subtle maturity though.

    But at the end of the day, what one person takes away from text, and what another person takes away from the same text can be surprisingly different. So maybe I just read all those cake day messages in the wrong light.




  • I haven’t been to the NFL, but friends took me to a baseball game while i’s there. It was a Mariners game, very fun night. But i felt the pressure to spend on everything as soon as you walked in, it felt like the stadium was incompetition against each specatator over the contents of your wallet.

    Luigi Zingales, a Chicago University Economist, recently did a Q&A where he talked about the two meanings of competition that the English language roles into the one word, that of competitions to defeat an opponent, and competitions creating something in kind. There are parts of the community that have opted for the first definition and act in all times against their opponents, as you say “weaponized greed”. What they don’t realise is what makes the market a force for good is acting with competitors, following the second defintion.

    A good example is the downtown nightlife district of a city. Alone those bars and eateries might be nice establishments, but if they’re the only option in town their product offering can become stale, but together in competition with each other they act to collectively create this fantastic and flexible destination for a night out.

    As for hostile public spaces the same happens here l, in Australia, so so much. I even have to catch myself and correct my preconceived notions when i see someone laying in a park. I suppose the only difference is the economic interests are more evenly weighted, due to no detroit-like lobbyists.


  • Its also societal construction and built environment issues. There is a genuine lack of agency in the Millenial generation, and likely less again in the younger generations.

    Take the built environment, its unfriendly to those with low resources, leading to isolation or dependency on those with resources, often boomer parents. The suburbs stretch on and on, all services public or private have been bundled together more and more, think super hospitals. Then they are placed further away because they now serve vast areas, there is also a fragility in these cost cutting ‘efficiencies’. If your one hospital is out of action what do you do? Even down to ever wider roads for ever larger cars, this impacts other activities an area could be engaging in.

    Societal construction has undermined any civic engagement organisations that don’t have a pro-owner slant. Its telling that unions have been smashed, but chambers of commerce? They are basically unions for business owners. It’s also an unwillingness of boomers to let go of power in certain community groups. How many of these locak groups are almost exclusively full of very mature age people?

    My last point i think ties into the above though. The X’ers, Millenials, and younger are getting hit progressively harder by the wage worker depression, while no risk financial speculation, and asset driven wealth inflation, line the beds of those with the means to participate. Usually the older, or children with inherited wealth. This means longer working hours for less relative income, a need to keep upgrading your ‘skillset’ to prove your value to HR, creating a poorer strata financially and in time. If the younger generations weren’t forced to change careers every six or so years to finally reach an ‘adult’ job, we would have time to participate more in our society.

    I think the Millenial generation (mine) is going to be rather boring in the footnotes of history. (X’ers had a bit of punk and metal that keeps them spicy.) We won’t have the resources to be anything but rather conservative in our policies (classically so, not the radical republican-conservatism of the 80’s on).

    On the bright side, in my country, Australia, the predicted shift to the ‘right’ as people get older seems to have broken. Which signals a rejection of the policies those parties stand for. Which are the policies causing the most acute problems for Millenials, and generations younger. So, maybe as the boomers fade, a generational solidarity will rise due to a union of desires, and our countrys will begin to feel less like generational trench warfare. That is my firm hope for the future of my time on this planet with you lot.






  • I know your joking, but can i hijack your comment a bit. Your comment kind of reflects my thoughts when i joined Lemmy.

    I like Perth, so I made that my ‘thing’ to contribute to Lemmy. So I echo the other commentor, “be the change”, and have a ‘thing’ that you do here.

    It’s helped me stay way more engaged, and have way more fun on here than I ever did on Reddit. If it’s turtles cool! If its something else, also cool!