wonderingwanderer

I know, I was just pointing out the irony that youtube is one of the primary offenders of surveillance capitalism

I wish the fediverse would get a wider user base, like loops and peertube. The more people use it, the more viable it will be as an alternative.

While I agree with taxing the rich more, I think placing a recurring tax on static assets is the wrong way to do it.

I mean it already happens to ordinary folks. Even after paying off your mortgage, you still have to pay property taxes every year, and if you fail to comply they can seize the land that you supposedly own. Not only is this a detriment to the working class (at least, if we can manage to fix the system to the point where the working class can afford to buy houses again), but it also cultivates this mentality in which “landowners pay the public coffers, so the local governments are here to serve the landowners.”

I think a radical tax reform bill which shifts the burden of taxation back to the ultra-wealthy and corporations should have a one-time wealth tax that’s assessed to equalize the playing field and make up for decades of cronyism and corrupt supply-side economic policy letting businesses and oligarchs get away with not paying their fair share. After that, the bulk of tax revenue each year should come from capital gains.

i.e. if your net worth was a million dollars last year and you didn’t do any profiteering activities so it stays a million dollars this year, you don’t get taxed on the same wealth a second time. Otherwise rich people would never be able to abandon the toxic “grow or die” mindset, which is a false dichotomy as long as static wealth is only taxed once.

But if you have a billion dollars, and you make ten million dollars this year, then you’re taxed on those ten million dollars. You keep five million, the public gets five million, everybody’s happy. If any billionaire isn’t satisfied with making $5,000,000 in one year after taxes, then they’re irredeemably greedy and just need to get over it.

(Realistically if they have a billion dollars then they’re probably making at least fifty million (5% APY is a fairly conservative investment), and should pay the same tax bracket or higher).

There could also be a wealth cap, say at ten billion. There’s no legitimate reason anyone would even need that much, so they can’t complain that they’re being oppressed when anything above that amount gets seized by the public at the end of the tax year and used to fund education, healthcare, affordable housing, social work, job coaching, and nutritional assistance for all those people they’ve impoverished by exploiting in order to build their corporate empires on the backs of.

In addition to that, I agree that there should be hefty fines for any “externalized” costs, at least enough that it actually costs them less to comply with regulations and so there’s no incentive to just continue breaking the law and write off the fines as the cost of doing business.

Several repeated violations egregious enough should also result in prison sentences. Billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to get away with white collar crimes just because they can afford to get away with it.

“fight back against surveillance capitalism and malicious advertisers by watching this youtube video”

Get a load of this! Can’t make this stuff up…

You’ve apparently never met Chinese tourists…

I never claimed that it happens outside of an acute overdose. I said it can happen, which is factually true. I also said there’s no way to guarantee an addict won’t take a large enough dose to deprive their brain of oxygen. It happens. Pretending it doesn’t is harmful. The cause of death for most opioid overdoses is literally cardiac arrest.

In the clinical sense, doses are administered to stay within safe limits, so supplemental oxygen is not needed.

You called it fatalistic bullshit to say RFK jr. has permanent brain damage…

Managed prescriptions are taken in safe doses. There’s no way to guarantee someone addicted to illicit opiates will stay below the threshold of dangerous consumption.

Even alcohol in large enough quantities kills brain cells. Stop pretending addiction is harmless, because it’s not helping addicts the way you seem to think it is.

When oxygen to the brain is habitually suppressed, brain damage can occur. That’s not fatalist, it’s just reality.

That doesn’t imply addiction is a moral failing. It’s a disease, and diseases can have permanent effects.

Anything that causes respiratory depression lowers available oxygen to the brain and can cause damage over time.

I understand the sentiment of destigmatizing addiction, but let’s not lie and say it can’t cause permanent damage. It’s a disease, right? And diseases can have aftermath.

You can envy my personal hell, and I will envy yours.

If you’re depressed, avoid impoverished neighborhoods (i.e. shitty flats). Poverty is depressing, and as elitist as that might sound, it’s fucking true.

Go get yourself a flat in a bougie neighborhood, somewhere walkable, with plenty of greenspace, well-maintained infrastructure, and happy neighbors.

You might still be depressed, but it’ll be magnitudes less than if you move into the cheapest place you can find.

Yeah, laundry isn’t that important. I can just wear the same clothes for months on end before they start to feel stiff and grimy…

And it’s not that I mind organizing. It’s that I have to study every thing individually to see whether I still need it out or if I can put it away. “Oh yeah, I got this book out cause I meant to read it. Let me look at the back cover and table of contents to see whether I’m still interested…” “Oh, here’s my embroidery hoop! Lemme just finish up this project real quick before I put it away.”

Lastly, having a thousand unfinished projects and constantly starting new hobbies isn’t that big of a deal, but the same pattern exists when it comes to career path, and it’s kinda hard to develop job skills when I literally can’t give a shit about something for more than a month at a time…

My digital world reflects my material world: 100+ open tabs, 100+ bookmarks, and still can’t see a project through to the end without getting distracted for hours going down a wikipedia rabbit hole…

What about when it’s “I’m totally going to do my laundry today” in the morning, and then suddenly realizing it’s already evening and I haven’t done a fucking thing all day, and saying “Okay, tomorrow for sure.” For literal weeks at a time.

Or how about this one? I start organizing in the morning, intending to spend the day decluttering. Ten minutes in, I get distracted with a book, or some craft supplies, or an unfinished, forgotten project, or whatever the hell else I find in the piles of clutter that crowd my room because I’m never quite done with it, but I rarely actually get back fo it because I’m always starting something new and hardly ever finishing anything.

My first thought was “Is that really an adhd thing? I thought it was just normal behavior.”

And then I realized…

It would need to be cloud-based, or otherwise require a lot of RAM

Whole grain is infinitely better.

The average american is conditioned from birth to prefer mediocre, bland, mass-produced food options with highly refined ingredients and/or highly processed foods with way too much sugar and artificial flavoring.

White bread is the lamest thing. Even “artisanal” bread in america is really just white bread in disguise, unless you know what to look for. I’ve even seen breads labeled as “with whole grains” that are actually just white bread with a few whole grains added in, just enough that they can put it on the label. I fucking hate the food industry here.

Oh, and fun fact: in Europe they call sliced bread “toast” because the only use they have for it is to toast it. Literally any other purpose and they choose a better bread.

I got in trouble once for pronouncing it correctly and people thought I was just being lewd 😭

Is that a 3 or an 8?