Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates,

None of these “attenders” are in the same region as Ukraine.

If this is a transition from how I live now to never needing to work again, I’m guessing the first 6 months to a year would just be disbelief and slacking. Video games, TV/YouTube, etc.

I’d probably do more of the things I do with my limited off time: gardening, taking care of family & pets, taekwondo.

Honestly have no idea what I’d do once I became accustomed to it. Maybe travel? Participate in local politics more? Volunteer? I would definitely have a sense that I needed to do something to make my life “worth it” that I currently get from working to provide for my family.

It’s definitely a result of conditioning, not some fundamental truth of the universe. But nearly 50 years of that conditioning is hard to break overnight.

This seems like a perfect opportunity for a counter intelligence operation, though. Yeah China wants our former military but since they’re military it seems like an easy lift to convert them into US assets either misinforming or sabotaging China.

Most of the military people I know took their oath to the Constitution seriously. I’m sure if the spooks at the CIA or NSA or whatever the new secret spy org is called asked, they could find some soon to retire guys who want to help out.

Someone should tell this guy that hot dogs exist.

I’ll let others address the “enshittification” angle but I thought I’d point out that “shareholder value uber allies” is a relatively recent … “innovation” … in economic theory, brought about by failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and Milton Friedman in the last half of last century:

https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/what-made-chicago-school-so-influential-antitrust-policy

The rethinking of what the boards of companies are supposed to do (from maximize stakeholder value to maximize shareholder value) and how they can operate (from requiring justification to approve mergers to requiring justification to block mergers) really took off with them, and exploded when former union boss Ronald Reagan found “religion” (because Nancy’s pussy was just that good) and ruined the economy for workers.

Lots of other people contributed, including Clinton after he “won” the 1992 election with 40% of the vote due to Perot splitting the Republican vote. His campaign of fiscal conservatism but without less bigotry became the model for the Democratic Party for the next two decades.

Anyway, Biden’s FTC is finally working to help workers again, which might even release the death grip of the Chicago School from our economy. We’ll see after November I guess.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/fact-sheet-ftcs-proposed-final-noncompete-rule

Yep! But they’re a dickens to actually eradicate. I’m going to be hatcheting some gashes in a big one or two on my property in August or September so I can poison its roots with glyphosate when it starts getting ready for fall. I’ve learned the hard way that if you leave the roots healthy you’re making tons of future work for yourself.

Privet is also a runner based plant and it’s also not from North America, but I’ve had more success looking it the old fashioned way.

It’s really gratifying to watch native species rebound and move back into the places after the introduced/invasive plants have been removed.

What’s really gonna suck is when people are like “holy shit why did they let us kill all the bugs if they were so important?!!”

Personally my property (2 acres) is free of all pesticides and herbicides. I’m killing introduced species of plants (trees of heaven and privet) by hand mostly pulling them out of the ground.

This year I might add Japanese honeysuckle to the target list.

I mean we’re probably doomed to some sort of major collapse either way, but I’ll do what I can on the micro scale and vote for people who will fight for the right path on the macro (e.g. never Republican).

PS - I do use poison bait inside for ants and cockroaches so not 100%. Only when they get noticable. Sorry.

I’m sure this will come if the wrong way but if you’re genuinely concerned about discovering diversity of thought, you’re going to have to tell us what your positions are for example.

I’m all for finding diversity, but so often what people who post these are looking for is an echo chamber. Like if you’re really wanting to be challenged, and you’re a conservative, go to https://socialistworker.org/ and read up.

But if what you’re concerned about is the nerds in Lemmy seem to be left leaning, that’s just the nature of smart creative people. We value skills and creativity over hierarchy and structure.

I dunno I think there’s probably been one or two “honest” inflations where a vendor has seen her costs increase and has only raised her prices just enough to cover those increases.

But yeah, I bet the majority of inflation has been rooted in avarice by shareholders and owners.

It just occurred to me that there are probably people who look at those bombings - after the war was effectively over BTW - not as evil (my view), nor as a regrettable but necessary way to avert American deaths, but as an actual heroic act.

Jesus, how do I live in a world where there are people like that running around having normal lives…?

It’s fascinating that this isn’t something that is always thrown back in the so called “pro life” person’s face. They’re only pro birth. They don’t care if the baby that comes out is fed, clothed, housed, eventually educated, etc. Or at least, they don’t believe there’s any collective responsibility to take care of that baby.

I have a feeling she will be successful if they DQ her and she challenges it. Interacting with the bureaucracy of the state we are expected to do what reasonable people would do to comply with the rules and regs, such as follow the directions on the forms provided and follow instructions from officials.

It’s unreasonable to expect a person to go digging for extra rules and extra regulations if there is no indication they might exist.

If the form had a place for aliases or prior names, then it would be ok to disqualify anyone who left out a previous name. If there were instructions to provide a list of previous names in a separate document, it would be ok to disqualify. Hell, if the person handing over the document or the website you download it from specifically stated that all previous names shall be disclosed, it would be ok to disqualify.

Most financial documents, for example, specifically ask for that. A lot of government identification applications (passports, drivers licenses, etc) ask for that. So when one encounters a form that doesn’t ask for that, there’s no reason to suspect that it’s necessary.

A good lawyer will have her on the ballot no problem.

I’m sure there were sneaky C suite jerks who tried to use return to office to filter out some headcount, but I’m not sure it would actually be wise from a practical standpoint.

If office workers can get their work done at home, there almost certainly also doing extra work, 15 more minutes here, 30 more minutes there, because they’re already at home. Spending a few more minutes isn’t going to get them stuck in worse traffic. It’s not going to mean their 7 year old is home alone. They won’t be late for dinner.

The only people who lose in a remote work paradigm are the people who spent their time wandering around “working” by dropping in on their direct reports. Surprise, it turns out we don’t actually need that!

So some other person can come behind you and say, “what if I want to know about different ways I can be unhealthy!?”

Give me a break. Government ends up footing the bill for the outcomes of these decisions. We can either tax the people making these decisions to pay for it, or tax everyone to pay for it. The latter just means people who don’t engagie in the behavior subsidize the people who do.

Tax unhealthy foods, make (actually) healthy food tax free. And not food that some marketing shitbag slaps a name like “healthy choice” on. Actually healthy food.

Use that tax money to subsidize the production & distribution of healthy food, especially to eliminate food deserts. This will lower the cost to the government of dealing with the consequences of unhealthy foods.

The answer is “vote” but not just once. Not just for federal elections. Every election, you should be there. Show up to candidate forums and bother your current electeds.

Every government is like a ship of various size, it takes a while to see the turn even start, let alone have the course actually get corrected. The bigger the government, the harder it can be to get long lasting positive change accomplished. (This isn’t a “small government is better” thing either, it’s just how large organizations work.)

If you can, run for office. If you can’t, find someone you trust who can and support them. Not just Congress or president or governor. City council, county government, school board, on and on…

It’s literally impossible for them to not be “analyzing” all the sounds they (perhaps briefly) record.

[Sound] --> [Record] --> [Analyze for keyword] --> [Perform keyword action] OR [Delete recording]

Literally all sounds, literally all the time. And we just trust that they delete them and don’t send them “anonymized” to be used for training the audio recognition algorithms or LLMs.

I will legit try to find countries with constitutions and parliaments that I could relocate to to live and work. The American constitutional Republic will be over if Trump becomes President again.

He’ll certainly start his retribution with the big fish of anti Trump people and organizations, but it won’t take long for it to “trickle down” to everyday people as well.

I’m lucky enough that it’s feasible for me to find work in my field outside the US. Others aren’t so lucky.

Of course they are. They saw what happened when all the kids who grew up watching sesame street and Mr Rogers learned how to think of other people as people and not things. They started supporting their right to exist! As valid individuals! With RIGHTS!?!

Conservatives can only prosper if empathy is suppressed, or at least heavily restricted. You see it every time yet another conservative changes their position on some social issue as soon as they experience whatever it is firsthand.

If they had empathy, they would’ve already supported the progressive position.

The problem honestly is your concept of hormones is incomplete. There are no hormones that only do one thing. They might have a primary function. But they all have secondary and tertiary functions. They all regulate other hormones. Evolution doesn’t do single functions.

If you knock down a “fight” hormone you’re probably going to mess up the homeostasis of the body in other ways. You can probably “fix” that artificially, but you’ll be constantly chasing the next side effect. Humans are chemical Rube Goldberg machines of infinite order. Disrupt one thing and it all goes out of whack.

I mean Serling and Sterling are so close it seems stupid to me to call it Mandela effect. More like humans gonna human.