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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • I mean, I like the other reply to this comment as well, but if a man posts in an all women community twice in quick succession after being warned it’s pretty easy to assume their intentions are bad - right? Like there are things people can say or do that are so engrained in the behavior of bad faith actors that you can kinda spot them.

    My point was just to reinforce that I agree with the notion that people can maliciously attempt to ruin a community or discourage individuals/groups from posting and that they should be banned. “No Nazi’s in the bar” kinda thing.



  • I think it’s hard simply because browsing by /all, or even by communities you follow and then just in your main thread, is not set up to highlight the community or it’s rules. If something hits the front page of /all I’m rarely digging into the communities specific rules or even where it’s coming from to an extent. Only to say, it’s a learned behavior to care about the communities specifically in this site aggregator system.

    All of that being said, people of course should respect community rules and learn the behavior of identifying what room they’re in before engaging with that community. I’m just not surprised when these flimsy barriers fail.

    Is the best behavior to block any community you don’t or can’t participate in? I personally don’t love that behavior because I like seeing what everyone is discussing in threads, but that’s a reasonable solution. Obviously my current strat is just reading the community before posting (like not commenting negatively about Star Gate getting a new season in the star gate community as an example that happened today lol).


  • I’m sad to see they aren’t producing a premium headset. I was hoping they learned their lesson with the steam deck about the appetite for certain hardware but maybe the VR space is a totally different market.

    That being said, this looks like it competes with the Big Picture 2 and I don’t know of a better headset sooooo this is likely what I’m gonna pick up.



  • I don’t feel like you’re engaging with the concept as a whole, and are far more interested in either the specific reason a single person is doing this OR more likely just taking the opportunity to call someone dumb to make yourself feel good.

    The reality is it’s probably not doing anything meaningful to AI data, but it is still an interesting concept from a language perspective. There’s no reason to get this worked up about something so trivial as combining the “th” sound into one character.




  • I get that it’s one person, I get that it’s an earnest but unsuccessful attempt to counter-AI, but also isn’t it kinda cool to advance the human language in a personal way. I’m surprised Lemmy is so upset by it, maybe that’s just the boomer mentality or maybe it’s the mentality of hating change, but like everyone can admit the English language is obtuse and hard to master and that’s partially because we have less letters than we have phonetic sounds (look at phonetic, it’s actually fOnetik). Couldn’t we use some advancement in that area of our life? And wouldn’t a grass roots movement on Lemmy symbolize the kind of simple, systemic changes we need more of this world? I mean isnt it kinda punk to improve the world in whatever way you can?

    Idk, just reading the comments in this thread people seem more antagonistic than I would expect. It’s not like we’re/he’s jumping to the shavian alphabet. It’s just a single change that anyone can immediately solve after reading a sentence or two with it present.

    Point is I like it. And I have no idea how to type it on my phone lol



  • I would have taken the eye compliment as a yellow flag and appreciated it as a genuine compliment with no ulterior motives. I think the shoulder massage offer is where I’d draw the line and say, yes that’s clearly someone looking to escalate things physically with you rather quickly.

    At least in my culture that would be seen as strange between acquaintances and still pretty strange between friends. I don’t think Japan is different in this regard so I would recommend clarifying your intentions sooner rather than later.

    You originally brought up your virginity and your long term desires for sharing that with a long term partner. I would not bring that up with anyone you didn’t want to convince you out of that belief. That might not be anyone’s individual intention but that’s the worst case scenario so you should consider it. That means telling a best friend is probably great and would be recommended. Telling an acquaintance or a friend who is also sexually attracted to you - and therefore may not be the best councilor to you for purely your benefit - would probably be an unwise thing to do. Unless of course you want them to convince you out of that belief so that you can more casually have sex, which is fine as long as you’re being honest with yourself on who is really responsible for that change.


  • I’m not certain you provided any signs that he viewed it as a date or even that he liked you. I’m not sure you characterized any motivation on his part that made me think he was into you, except for that part of your conversation was around marriage and it read like you brought that up not him which I guess would be a signal that material was on their mind (but that’s irrelevant if you brought it up I’d say).

    I generally assume all men want to sleep with all women regardless of any other concept or notion, simply because sex is fun and men in my experience seem on average far more willing to do that with just about anyone. That’s not really true, and it’s not really a fair assumption, but I don’t think it causes harm if you don’t act irrationally on it.

    It sounds like he:

    • likes talking to you because he invited you on two outings (both of which you assumed were dates)
    • is rich and therefore when he pays for the food it lessens the implication that it’s a date (although I think that’s fair to keep in mind. To provide a counter example, I pay for friends meals semi-frequently and have always paid for every 1v1 meal with a woman (and most of the men 1v1s among peers or younger) as a thank you for the company. This is not attached to romantic or sexual expectations or desires, it’s just how I was raised and have decided to maintain that practice because I like it).
    • is attractive (by your own admission)

    I’m not certain I can gleam any more information about him out of your text.

    Did he only want to talk to you about relationships and physicality? Was he physically distant or was he escalating touches? Did you catch him giving you signals like checking you out or anything else that might point to a purely carnal thinking?

    Otherwise I’d say right now, it’s safe to assume he wants to have sex with you. It’s also probably unfair to assume that’s all he wants and doubly unfair to assume that that’s his motive for hanging out with you.

    I believe men and women can have platonic relationships, which I think based on some comments you made in this thread you also believe.

    So I’d recommend a couple possibilities:

    • Your gut says he just wants to sleep with you, it’s heavy on your mind, or you just like being very communicative. In this case, communicate clearly and honestly something like “hey, just to get this off my chest I’m enjoying our conversations and 1v1s but as I explain to all men early on, I’m not interested in dating or anything physical right now. If that’s why you wanted to hangout, I understand and you’ve done nothing wrong, but that’s not why I was enjoying hanging out. If that’s not what you were looking for, and you’re okay with just being platonic friends, I can’t wait for our 1v1.”
    • If you don’t think he was actually pursuing you, you feel like he was pretty normal hanging out with you, or you just don’t want to broach this subject until you’re certain you both have misaligned intentions I’d recommend continuing as normal, and mentally defining your boundaries while preparing to communicate them when you need to. This would look like (as a random kinda silly example) “he grabs your shoulder once while telling a story or something”, maybe no big deal for you and you move along, “he grabs your shoulder constantly and it’s now abnormal behavior”, you tell him you don’t like this and ask them to stop and then clarify your intentions with him (probably after that event/gathering).

    Please know this is coming from a man’s perspective and it’s as brief as I could make it. Please consider the normal woman wisdom (even if it sucks that it’s required) that you should focus on your immediate physical safety first and emotional/mental safety next at all times. If you get the feeling that clear communication would put you in danger, don’t do it until you’re safe.


  • I think you’re misattributing things here that I think can and should be explained by wealth inequality. Big box stores don’t kill small towns because they destroy competition, they kill small towns because some percentage of money spent at a big box store leaves that small town. It’s not the lack of competition that kills small towns it’s the fact that after those small town businesses close less wealth exists in the hands of people in that small town. There’s less money moving around in that town because a portion of it is being siphoned off to big box store profits which go to shareholders and out of state C-suites and the likes.

    Yes, higher density means more taxes are raised per area which means it’s easier to spend on infrastructure in high density areas but you’re missing the point. If wealth was distributed properly we’d have enough money to build all the infrastructure we want comparatively almost regardless of the density of the population. As wealth inequality grows less taxes are being paid to the government in high density and low density scenarios. As wealth inequality grows the more the government is in debt to the wealthy and the less it can spend on vital services. There’s enough money in the system to pay for Internet and hospitals and rail and school to service every person in the US but the money isn’t held by everyone, it’s held by people who have those services covered where they are and so they don’t care if they drain the rest of the country of those things. Wealth inequality explains why small towns are dying because it explains why they can’t afford to stay open, stay profitable, stay connected, stay healthy.

    And to circle back around to your original paragraphs, I don’t care how much people like living in big cities they can’t live there on vibes alone. They have to go where the money is, and you best believe when Boeing opens up a new plant in a city they put a whole lot of money into that city (ignoring city special contracts for a moment). I like living in a big city, I want to move to an even bigger city, I’m not because I don’t have a job there right now. I live where the work is. And yes, denser cities means more jobs and more opportunities but that only gets less true and less meaningful the more wealth inequality grows. If I can’t afford to rent a flat in 10 years, the same way I can’t afford to rent a house today then what’s the point? If my job doesn’t pay me meaningfully more in 10 years because stocks have to go up (please read that as wealth inequality) then what’s the point? Cities don’t create jobs or high paying jobs because money moves fast, it’s because that’s where the wealth is. Look at any major city in the US (at least) and you can find the increasingly small list of increasingly massive companies that have offices there and you can trace the money. If Kansas city lost Garmin or Hallmark they’d feel it, if the government went further into debt and had to slash services Kansas City would feel it, if one of the massive freight companies left KC would feel it. The point is cities are built on wealth and the movement of wealth, but if it increasingly is drained out of those cities it will be harder and harder to sustain those cities. It won’t matter where people like living, they’ll have to move to where the money is.

    I really do think looking at where money comes from and where it’s going is critical to understanding why the standard of living is declining while there’s never been more wealth or productivity in history. We could all own homes, all have healthcare, have highspeed rail, higher education, if only the rich didn’t exist. We have to tax them out of existence and build a system that works for the overwhelming majority of people instead of the 1%.


  • “Not as consumers, no. The 1% doesn’t consume more than the 90th percentile.”

    But that’s the thing, as the wages of workers goes down their ability to consume goes down as well. Sure they’ll never stop needing food and clothes but new cars, sushi, new TVs, vacations, preventative healthcare, higher education, etc - these things become impossible. Debt will surely be the next step to keep the engine running but that will only accelerate the transfer of wealth because debt is paid to those who have assets. And quite frankly we’re already there - university (in the US), the rise of buy now and pay later programs, healthcare the moment you need to use it - these things require massive debt today. It’ll only get worse.

    As wealth gets drained from the working class into the owning class, the only meaningful consumers for the majority of goods and services will be the owning class. Services will increasingly be focused on the wealthy or on methods of serving the poor via borrowing from the rich (which only exasperates their poverty).


  • I don’t think I am being over dramatic, I’d love to know what specifically you think isn’t grounded or reasonable.

    Plenty of businesses do thrive off of the lower 90% of wage earners but those businesses are increasingly owned by the 0.1% and I’m talking about a slope here - a velocity. “Increasingly…” means there is a trend. When all wealth is increasingly owned by the wealthy 1% then we’ll see all possible wealth be within their immediate vicinity, within serving their needs. When there’s 50 businesses offering a service or product you can expect to see the wealth of those 50 companies spread out over many locations, but when all products and services are produced by 1 company you can expect most of their wealth to be situated in fewer places. Less competition means lower wages which means everywhere those workers are there is less wealth circulating. More wealth in fewer hands means less money flowing around to enliven cities, towns, villages.

    More restaurants in cities because there’s more money in cities because there’s more people - but small towns used to have good restaurants too, with variety. But as wealth drains from the hands of the many into the hands of the few more corners have to be cut. More quality goes away. Another restaurant closes because people have to eat out less. It’s all a matter of how much wealth is in your community and owned by your community.

    Things to do is facilitated by that same factor, but additionally by infrastructure. If the US had high speed rail connecting every major city and town, everyone would have a lot harder time justifying being within 30 minutes of city center by car when a train could take them into city center for cheaper, less hassle, and quicker from a much farther distance. We can’t build that infrastructure because… of a lot of reasons, but I’d argue most of them come back to too much money in the hands of too few people and that it’s only getting worse.

    It’s why populism is so popular right now. It’s why the US is sliding rapidly into fascism. It’s why most European countries score as better places to live in nearly every metric, and it’s why if they’re not careful they’ll be in exactly the same situation in a few years time.

    Wealth inequality is everything.


  • The more wealth inequality grows the less important 99% of the population is as consumers and the more important the 1% becomes. As our governments go increasingly into debt to the benefit of only the rich, infrastructure will continue to suffer. As wealth inequality grows the standard of living for the 99% will continue to decline, making the ability to own assets like housing an impossibility.

    Add these factors together and you can see why people are forced to move to where the rich are, because that’s where the business is, because they’re the only people with enough money to constitute a customer, and because everyone else doesn’t have the money or infrastructure to go where they’d like to regardless of business smaller communities get choked out.

    The only way to get the life you deserve, a better life for everyone in your country regardless of where you are in the world, is to tax the rich out of existence. Remove the possibility of becoming a threat to organized society, to democracy. Remove the threat of amassing wealth beyond reason and watch as your country becomes profitable, your job pays you more, the price of goods and services go down, and the quality of life for everyone begins to rise instead of plateau or decline.


  • The amount of investment you’d need to reduce your need to work takes the average person multiple decades, that’s literally what retirement is. And even if you only considered a part time retirement that still takes decades. In fact my current understanding is most people’s retirement funds will be insufficient when they go to retire.

    No amount of investing will save the majority of people from needing to work for the majority of their life. The other alternatives to selling your labor to capital, like starting your own business, requires up front investment and even then isn’t a guarantee. The number of jobs that require minimal investment and can serve as a sole source of income do not exist in sufficient quantities.

    So no, investing is not the solution, becoming an entrepreneur is not a solution, at the scale of our society there are few solutions and the primary one is taxing corporations more and taxing billionaires out of existence.

    People deserve a right to live. I’m not saying people shouldn’t plan for retirement, I’m not saying don’t try and start a business. I’m saying to you stop framing it as dependency, that’s a fuckin crazy thought process. The overwhelming majority of people go to school and then get a job. Those people deserve to thrive without having a perfect stock portfolio which will materialize in 40 years, without having a second job, without turning their art into a commercial enterprise.



  • “Dependency on a single wage is the entire problem people are having” is a crazy statement to read from someone who is trying to give advice on the Internet. The entire problem is not that people have one job, it’s that all the profits are going to the fewest people in our society. No one should have to work two jobs to survive, that’s an insane status quo you’re attempting to defend.

    Stop defending the status quo, stop defending corporations, stop trying to normalize surviving this system and start normalizing changing it. We need large societal reform and every additional person who has to work two jobs is another family ready to do so through violent means.