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Andy

@ andrewrgross @slrpnk.net

Posts
112
Comments
1432
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Can someone post a pic of what they think the average lemming looks like?

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  • This is funny but I'm surprised Mint is at the bottom.

    I guess I shouldn't be. I didn't really notice how popular it's gotten. I'm used to thinking of it as a cooler Ubuntu.

  • I really don't understand how people have 200+ guests at their weddings.

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  • Can you imagine how bland the average an American wedding must look to them?

  • I really don't understand how people have 200+ guests at their weddings.

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  • The size of families and the expectation of who gets invited varies a lot by culture, too.

    Irish weddings are often big. Same for Mexican weddings, a lot of Arab folks.

    I suspect Protestant Americans are outliers globally in the size of the average family and the degree of contact people maintain with cousins.

  • An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta

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  • The difference is between doing it secretly or in the open.

    I assume I'm monitored on my work computer, but me and my company both know they aren't supposed to.

    When they admit it and make you look them in the eye and consent to it, that's when the social contract unravels in a big way.

    There's a line from a great comedy in which an oligarch is berating his son for playing elaborate games to ruin the life of a schlub who once disrespected him, right after we see the oligarch at a party where people are shitting on glass coffee tables with prostitutes under them. The son says, "How is it any different from what you do?!?" And the dad says, in a posh Oxford accent, "The glass, son. The glass."

  • An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta

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  • I think figuring out how to find solidarity across the working class is a guidepost to revolution.

    It's more than okay to admit that it's challenging. Anything else is just untrue.

    I do think the effort is worth it. I think uniting for a better world is the prize we win when we figure out how to construct a society that accommodates as much diversity of thought and lifestyle as our civilization contains.

  • If most of the jobs get replaced by AI, how people will have income to spend on products which will likely be produced by AI itself?

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  • Peter Frase wrote an article (and soon after a book expansion of it) called "Four Futures" in which he examines this question.

    According to Frase, the future we wind up with can be categorized into a Punnett square based on two questions: will essentials be abundant or scarce? And will they be distributed selfishly or universally?

    If we have more than we need and we give it away universally, that's Communism. If we have less than we need, but we share what we have and our burdens equally, that's Socialism.

    Now here's the two you're asking about. If we don't have a populist revolution, we wind up with one of the bad ones.

    If we have abundance, but it's hoarded, we get Rentism. You can see outlines of this already. It's where you pay for digital files that can be endlessly reproduced and are forced into subscriptions to continue using appliances despite the fact that their continued use is free to the company. This is the one you're asking about. If we reached full automation, but still charged people for everything, you'd have a version of serfdom, likely with a basic income. The income would likely be based on a social credit system in which people who show the most obedience are rewarded with money to buy things that are basically free to produce. There might be a system of artificial scarcity to force people to devote a certain number of hours each day to unnecessary work or watching advertisements to receive income.

    The last one is called Exterminism. You can read about it in the article. It's pretty self-explanatory.

  • Need to get one of these!

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  • Poe slaw

  • star wars or star trek?

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  • This is what I came to say.

    I think because of the comedy it often gets overlooked as a genuine Star Trek show. And that's a mistake.

  • star wars or star trek?

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  • Hard disagree.

    The characters and stories stand on their own. The jokes are great too, but ultimately, I care about the characters and their journeys as much as I cared about the TNG Enterprise crew.

    It's got real heart.

  • star wars or star trek?

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  • I won't argue that both have released some superfluous cash-in content, but can you really say that they've enshitified when we also get stuff like Lower Decks and Andor?

    Both have produced mixed content, but they've also each released some of their best entries during the last five years.

  • YSK some unconventional ways you can contribute to OpenStreetMap

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  • What I'm really interested in is using OSM and the associated apps as a framework to develop me features.

    I have a dream where I can search a map app like Google Maps for a barber or baker, bit ask the results are worker owned.

    I'd also like an app that makes the Fallen Fruit urban harvest app more user friendly, and includes food pickup and drop off sites.

    Is this something I could do?

  • Solarpunk @slrpnk.net
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    Damn, you folks see Harrison Ford's commencement speech?

  • YSK some unconventional ways you can contribute to OpenStreetMap

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  • This is really interesting to me but also overwhelming. I'll try to work through it later and follow up with questions.

  • Israeli soldiers say orders were to kill any man encountered in Gaza

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  • I remember this incident.

    Words don't do justice to the depravity.

  • How come Presidents don't just be honest with people? Like say I started this war because I own oil stock so tough shit. Or like yea I was a pedo back then so tough shit. so on and son on ?

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  • There is actually a popular book that answers this kind of question: "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics"

    I haven't read it, but from summaries, my understanding is that the answer to your question is that every high ranking office depends on maintaining support from other people with power. Even if we disregard voters, Trump (and other presidents) need to keep generals, oligarchs, and senators happy, or they can remove him from power. Naked disrespect for the rabble displeases these people, because they're still sensitive to assassinations, market disruptions, challenges from other power centers like state governments, etc.

  • Sierra Club Endorses Tom Steyer for California Governor

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  • I totally understand it. It's very hard to resist someone who tells you everything you want to hear.

    But we should ask what the effect of someone winning is likely to be, not what they say they're going to do. Gavin Newsom ran on single payer healthcare too. Someone running on it doesn't mean it's going to happen.

    In Newsom's case, it wasn't going to happen because he was a lying snake. In Steyer's case, it takes policy expertise and political acumen, and unfortunately, he's spent the equivalent of 2,000 UCLA bachelors degrees trying to obscure the fact that he's not actually qualified to do politics.

    I wish more people could see this. I'm not just voting against him because I resent him for being rich. It's because he can't spend enough to convince me that he's actually capable of delivering, because the skills it takes to do so are the same skills it takes to get elected without buying elections, which means his money is just proof that he can't actually get things done.

    Also, frankly, I have no reason to trust him too, but that's not even the biggest problem.

  • Interesting

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  • Perhaps I didn't communicate this well, but that was kind of central to my point: the work they did has grown enough beyond their initial writings that we don't really need to fixate so much on the original texts.

    For instance, I really liked China Mieville's "A Specter, Haunting". He kind of summarized The Communist Manifesto, and I thought it was more readable than the original. It was easier for me to engage with, and he placed it in modern context.

    To put my point another way, I think we should focus more on the ideas rather than the thinkers.

  • Interesting

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  • I want to clarify my point. I'm definitely not dismissing the importance of these figures or the value of reading them.

    What I'm saying is that I think people put too much emphasis on what their opinions were rather than just learning from their ideas and synthesizing them with the ideas of their contemporaries and intellectual progenitors.

    To go back to my example, there's a meme among creationists that Charles Darwin recanted his theory of evolution on his deathbed. It's baseless, but more importantly it's irrelevant. The value of his ideas are not dependent on what he believed. He's notable because he contributed to a framework on which we hang a larger understanding.

    Similarly, I think Marx et. al. contributed ideas that are still very useful to our collective discourse. But their opinions are not prophesy, and I think people should focus more on the collective wisdom of the fields that they birthed rather than the specific opinions they personally held.

  • Interesting

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  • Frankly, I feel like I'm alone in this take, but I think people shouldn't spend so much attention basing their politics primarily on references to philosophers who died more than a century prior.

    These are important figures for historical study, but we don't base our modern understanding about genetics on the work of Darwin and Mendel: we base these on the work of Watson, and Crick, and Franklin, and Margulis, and Sanger, and hundreds (or thousands) of people who carried the work forward since.

    We still teach starting with the early folks to give context. But they aren't the basis for our beliefs.

    This goes for Marxists AND anarchists (and everyone else): sell your ideas in the modern age.

  • Best use I've seen of this template

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  • Agreed.

    This is so delightfully silly. This just made my day.

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    The real lucky charm is the humble worker's hammer

  • World News @lemmy.world
    Andy @slrpnk.net
    +972 Magazine

    With West Bank under total Israeli closure, settlers are seizing the moment

    www.972mag.com /west-bank-closure-israeli-settler-violence-iran/
  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    Relax nerds

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    I didn't join the revolution to read

  • solarpunk memes @slrpnk.net
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    buncha nerd shit

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    It's totally normal for tools to say they're depressed, just tune it out

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    I don't like it, but I don't make the rules

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    Apparently he's a gaming YouTuber now

  • World News @lemmy.world
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    Israel prepares to call up 450,000 soldiers amid mounting toll on reservists and their families - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

    www.jta.org /2025/05/28/israel/israel-prepares-to-call-up-450000-soldiers-amid-mounting-toll-on-reservists-and-their-families
  • U.S. News @beehaw.org
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    ICE denies detained Mahmoud Khalil temporary release to meet their newborn son | CNN

    www.cnn.com /2025/04/21/us/mahmoud-khalil-denied-ice-release-son-birth/index.html
  • solarpunk memes @slrpnk.net
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    I looked it up and this is real

  • Solarpunk @slrpnk.net
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    I had a thought about the popularization of solarpunk today

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    Let's not take things to far okay

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    They can't hold out forever

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    They're gonna be so embarrassed when they find out

  • solarpunk memes @slrpnk.net
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    They're gonna be so embarrassed when they find out

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    A simple mnemonic

  • Star Trek Social Club @startrek.website
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk?

    mstdn.games /@FullyAutomatedRPG/113924421710964188
  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    Andy @slrpnk.net

    Plz stop :(