Optimization feels a lot less optimal when it leads to enshittification. I have worked on the tech side of accounting systems in the US for the last 10 years and can say that American companies have largely embraced this category of innovation as well.
I’m living the inverse of your experience right now. Just started a new job that requires 3 days in the office after having worked several years fully remote. I sit next to a full wall-length window and yet am being battered by soul-crushing overhead fluorescents. Time to figure out where the controls to the lights near me live in the breaker. I hear the COO likes all of the lights on so he can “feel like there are more people in the office.” Bully for him.
Classic, it’s a good one.
I dig it, cool song!
Yeah, that’s one of my favorites too! Got any good examples you like? One of my favs is “Ivory” by Polyphia. It hits right towards the end of the song and always gets me good.
I like it when a chorus gets built up more on each repetition, either with the addition of more instrumental parts, new harmonies or background vocals, or a beat change that brings up the intensity.
Similarly, I like when that same effect happens within 2 halves of a chorus. Example of one I heard recently is the chorus of the song “Breathing” by ELLEGARDEN. The 2nd half adds a higher vocal harmony + a picked lead guitar line that open up the sound a bit and just give it a nice little emotional boost.
I propose that human greed leads to the corruption of both capitalist and communist systems in actual practice. The difference is that in capitalism, greed is publically encouraged and publically rewarded, while in communism, greed is publically discouraged and privately rewarded. Inequality is present in both practices ostensibly (with few historical exceptions). Whatever economic systems are implemented by humanity, some people are winners and some are losers.
The question of what system is best cannot be settled by only historical anecdotes. Historical record is too biased towards its own context, though we can look at patterns that have emerged through recorded history to try and achieve a more objective understanding; we have to examine a system as it exists right now. We must accept that no system will be exempt from human greed and focus our efforts on policies that fight against it wherever possible. This is not an enlightened centrist position; this is the position of someone who wants to maximize the number of societal winner and minimize the number of losers.
Here’s a quote from a Washington Post blog/summary article.:
Would you, co-moderator Martha MacCallum asked DeSantis, support sending American Special Forces over the southern border to take out the cartels that produce fentanyl, a synthetic opioid thought to be the leading cause of death for Americans 18-49. “Yes,” he replied confidently. “And I will do it on Day One.” “Would I use force? Would I treat them as foreign terrorist organizations? You’re damn right I would,” he continued.
Indeed, was quite a shock! This was in the US, state of Nebraska, about 15 years ago.
Thanks for the kind words. 0/10 experience, do not recommend.
It really is gut-wrenchingly hard! I have lots of good mementos of him and (sorry if this is creepy) have kept his ashes. I went on a months-long roadtrip/move earlier this year and his urn was along for the ride. He hated the car, lol.
In my case, I only stayed for one night and left the next day. It was an acute ward, meaning that it was intended for people having immediate mental health crisis. The hospital and staff were all fine. I had gone in for an evaluation at my doctor’s recommendation in the morning. I spoke with a doctor there, who brought a police officer into the room at the end of our conversation, who told me I could either check myself into the hospital or spend the night in jail. I opted for the more comfortable of the two options. To be released the next day, I had to convince the doctors that I wasn’t an active threat to myself or others.
The experience overall did further damage to my mental health and trust in the medical system. At the time, I was having thoughts of suicide without the intention of acting on them; they were just becoming more intrusive. I was honest about this with the hospital staff and I believe now that was a mistake. This was many years ago and I am in a healthier place these days, but it took awhile to get here and I doubt I’ll ever speak as honestly with a mental health professional again.
All said, I have lived a pretty lucky life and am a successful person (by my account). But even so, life is full of this type of stuff for pretty much everyone. Fun question, OP!
If your soup or sauce sparks a little bit next time, you’ll know, lol.
Thinking of it a bit differently, have you considered you might not be sensitive enough? There’s some real benefits to living with a healthy dose of sensitivity; for one, it is part of a healthy response to situations that could be physically harmful to you. Best of luck out there :)
I have been using Calyx for the past few months, which is a 1 year pre-paid connection through the T-Mobile network for $750 the first year. No data caps, have used it in the Southwest, South Central, and Midwest parts of the country with fairly good results. I measure up/down occasionally and get anywhere from 30Mbps - 250 Mbps up / 1 - 25 Mbps down. Lots of variety in the signal based on location and time of day, which is my main complaint, but it should be expected with a mobile data connection. Not fancy, but I go through a lot of data at my job and generally don’t have much problems streaming video.
To be honest, I will probably try to switch over to a fiber connection when my year is up because I’m not longer working from the road, but it really hasn’t been the worst solution by far.
I mostly agree, and that’s the main reason why I’m in favor of remaining federated. Beyond that, I think there may even be some benefit to remaining federated even with people that, as you say, “generally want bad things.”
For one, in real life, people who generally want good or bad things are exposed to each other in public. That may lead to some confrontation, and that confrontation could be an opportunity for people to stand up for what’s important to them. Digitally, pushing “the bad people” out of public view could encourage them to isolate more among the like-minded and radicalize further.
Second, selectively filtering people out of a largely broad community on the basis of a moral judgement about their intentions shouldn’t be a decision made lightly. I am not saying that it’s never warranted, or that we should try to be open-minded with people who hold horrifying, dehumanizing beliefs. Good/Bad is a label that seems easily applied in some cases (nazis = bad), but it is not always that clear. For that reason, I believe we should be conservative with defederation.
I find myself having conflicting thoughts about defederation in general.
Much of mainstream social media these days leads to isolation of ideologically-opposed communities from one another and pushes together more like-minded communities (“echo chamber”). I think that’s a bad thing.
I don’t find Hexbear’s culture a good fit for me, and though I share many of the same political sentiments, that’s why I’m using lemm.ee and not hexbear.
I would not enjoy it if a large group of alt-righters suddenly federated with us and became a very vocal presence, even if a large number of their users were often polite, because I am so strongly opposed to those politics.
How to balance between an “all or none” approach and avoid perpetuating an echo chamber? I’d say continue bolstering controls for individual users to decide and federate widely for now. The more visibility the instances have among each other, the more overall awareness there will be in the user base of which communities are truly bad actors vs. large, vocal, and a little immature.
AnyList. I’ve tried many list apps and this one is easily the best. Not FOSS disclaimer. The free version has very minimal ads, it has a great, intuitive UI, you can create custom list types and item categories, it has built in quantity and unit of measure fields, and you can share/sync a list with others by email address. The amount of features included in the free version is uncommon in the market without getting more harassed by advertisements. I hope it doesn’t change in the future; it’s remained relatively unchanged for the 3 years I’ve been using it!