Take back power anyway you can.

Tenant unions, worker unions, worker cooperatives, community land trusts, tool libraries.

Work towards owning your business and your home and your community WITH your coworkers and your neighborhood and your community.

We can overcome the tyrants if we work together. Federal elections are only one small piece of the puzzle and no one will save us but ourselves.

Ay, St. Louis represent! It’s a rare day when I see it online in the wild.

I came to say the same thing. It’s a good message but we could improve it by not having too low of a bar. Fuck landlords, everyone should own their housing.

The OC did not raise a valid criticism of our tax structure, or calling their statement that is a stretch. They complained at where it went, but not how our taxes are structured. You brought up a tax structure complaint, specifically a land value tax. That’s not applicable to the primary thread although sure, I’m all for taxing landlords out of existence. Everyone should own the land they live on and part of the land they work on and part of the land their community is built on.

Now back to the primary thread, explain to me how the exchange of goods and services for money is taking money from working class people? Do you describe the baker as taking money from you? I know you don’t because you aren’t programmed to, so why not extend that same language to the government which (ideally) does the exact same thing.

I don’t know how a society gets high quality public healthcare, research, transit, welfare, regulations, or defense without taxes. I think that’s naieve given the current state of the world showing that when you remove or corrupt government from/in things like healthcare (for example in the US) you get a terrible healthcare system. Same with every other category. There is no country with strong defense that doesn’t have a government and taxes, same with every other category I provided. Not to say what exists today bounds what can exist tomorrow but still.

I mean I get your point, it’s easy to assume the consistent factor in the discussions is the problem and you might be right. Id argue the systems of Lemmy are producing, through a mechanism I don’t understand, worse conversations over time. It might not even be Lemmy but the rise of AI or bots, I don’t really know. But I’ve had a couple conversations now within a short period that it’s like talking to people with an axe to grind throwing a random dart at the comment section and having it out there under the guise of talking to me - a person. It’s infuriating.

You’ve not been that bad, but you did miss the entire point of what I was saying and didn’t really engage with the point of my comment. Maybe my comments aren’t as focused as I think they are, or maybe in online discourse the capacity to focus on the secondary threads (or maybe the inability to distinguish what the main topic is) is too hard. Idk.

I’m not trying to attack you, I’m venting my frustration for something you did but that isn’t your fault as I’m systemically seeing it on Lemmy as of late.

Like imagine replying to this comment with “ignoring what you wrote, when the government reaches into your pocket to take your money, shouldn’t we have a better say in where that money gets spent.” It’s like… Not engaging with the person’s comment in it’s entirety and focusing on the smallest secondary thread instead while reinforcing the reason why I brought up the primary thread.

Again, no shame or disdain or ill feelings towards you. I’m just trying to explain what happened from my perspective and now officially and publicly wondering why this keeps happening.

I am slowly loathing commenting on Lemmy, people here seem increasingly incapable of having a good conversation.

I’m explicitly saying framing it as “reaching into your pocket and taking your wages” is a negative light to cast taxes in. You don’t go to the bakery and buy bread and describe it as the baker reaching into your pocket and taking your wages. That would be insane. You pay the baker to provide you bread.

Society should, and I’m gonna emphasize this for the most common commentors, should as in theoretically in an ideal society taxes should feel like a person paying the city for good public transit, universal healthcare, UBI, minimally expensive maximally effective defense, a social safety net, regulatory bodies, public education, fire protection, wildlife preserves and parks, libraries, and public and enriching spaces.

It shouldn’t, ideally, feel like someone reaching into your pockets, it should feel like a valuable transaction. Taxes don’t have to be a negative thing, akin to someone stealing your money. They should be something people take pride in.

Of course the US is a falling state and so this hasn’t been the case for a long time (if ever), and most other countries despite providing better services still have to deal with the conservative propaganda that “welfare” and “healthcare” and “public transit” are wasteful. That’s not what I’m really here addressing. I’m just saying painting taxes as theft enables and supports conservative propaganda that disables or errodes community ownership and power - the very things that are synonomous with quality of life.

I don’t know if I love that phrase’s use here as it sets up the government as some foreign entity that is stealing from you when, at least in theory, it should be the price you pay for your community’s betterment. Of course that’s not what it feels like in the US (maybe anywhere, maybe federal taxes feel bad always), but that’s an argument for redistributing power and fixing the underlying systems more so than it is to be upset that taxes are a thing (or paint them as… Evil or something which this phrase does).

You’re conflating my intentions with wanting to replace streaming or what you carry on the go. I do not want to replace streaming with CD’s. I want to replace owning my own music with streaming and I don’t like that the most prevalent option for purchasing physical copies of music is CD’s and vinyls - both of which have drawbacks in my eyes.

So I’m day dreaming about a new format that is essentially a cool SD or thumb drive in disguise that could host an album or an artist and be accessible via my phone in a way that vinyl and CDs are not.

You’re writing a lot about a topic I’m not talking about. CD’s are coming back, I don’t love CD’s, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a better version of physical music we could buy. That’s the whole Convo.

Sorry, I should have said a Hi-Res format (which tbh means lossless compared to the best recording to me or colloquially lossless).

I agree, I want something more collectible than thumb drives but better (and cooler) than CDs. Ideally something with a retro sci-fi aesthetic and modern transfer capabilities (USB C).

I guess I’ve always heard that CD quality wasn’t the “best” and upon Kagi’ing it, that seems to be correct as there’s a tier above it called Hi-Res formats. Now, you make a point that CD’s are as good as we can hear, but I’m not exactly sure that’s true in all senses (assuming perfect audio equipment). Either way, wouldn’t it be cool to have the ideal (best) format in a form factor that our audio players can actually play (phones).

I would much rather carry around a Nintendo style game cartridge case that carries mini USB-c drives that stored an album or an artist’s collection. That to me is pretty cool. At least to me, the combination of CD’s being not Hi-Res audio, a format that’s hard to play in my main music devices (phone or home theater, which in this case does not contain a CD player (although it does contain a vinyl player, go figure)), and that subjectively isn’t a cool form factor in the same way Vinyl or Game cartridges are makes me long for a more retro-scifi form with modern transfer mechanisms.

If CD quality is less than ideal, is there a world where we sell like… Game cartridge sized USB drives with lossless audio files instead? Wouldn’t it be cool to have a new form factor that allows for the feeling of physical ownership but is modern and more universal.

I loved control and Alan wake 1 (although that was years ago and I don’t think the gameplay holds up anymore).

I’m hesitant to pick this up because I can’t imagine it maintaining the same atmosphere as control being this big third person action adventure. I imagine the cut scenes still being good but while playing it you don’t get the same SCP vibe as Control. If anyone has comments on this I’d love to be persuaded, as of right now it’s a wait until deep sale for me which I wouldn’t have believed about a Control sequel.

I’ve ranted about this too many times but I think this is a classic shallow take. The prequels didn’t have a resurgence in appreciation because people grew up with them and therefore found them good, they just over time were judged by their merits instead of their expectations. I think if someone watched Episode 1 cold, they’d find one of the better Scifi films out there. I don’t think there’s been a cooler, more fast paced, multipart fight in cinema than the end of the phantom menace. Episode 2 has some terribly rough dialogue and pacing and the romance plot arc but it undeniably has style and flair and aura that few scifi films have been able to match. The chrome ships of Naboo… Fuck I’m ranting again.

The prequels are not what the original generation wanted from star wars films. They are however good, if not flawed films, that expand the world, have an artistic vision, and have a cohesive underlying story they’re trying to tell. It’s not the meme’s that keep the movies alive it’s the world and the world is 100% better off for having the prequels in them.

The sequels are the complete opposite. They’re bad films or at best lazy okay films, that shrink the world while ruining the past lore, that do not have an artistic vision, that do not have an underlying story they’re trying to tell. There is no rise of fascism through a failing democracy level of artistry, there is no pure heroes falling to corruption due to beaucracy and a loss of their original purpose, etc. There isn’t even a vibe or an aesthetic that is worth pursuing in the sequels in my opinion - and why that is I don’t really know, because I believe a lot of horribly talented people put their hearts into the appearance of the sequels but there’s nothing that comes to mind that feels like it fits the vibe and is entirely new. But that’s subjective. What’s not subjective is that they shrunk the world, reversed the progress, contradicted the lore, and failed to provide new fertile ground for stories. I don’t think someone walks away from any of the sequels individually or collectively and is inspired to tell new star wars stories where as the originals and the prequels all had that power.

Everything you said and it was a fantastic web series. Truly amazing what they were able to make.

It was a rowdy crowd, I choose to take it in jest. Thanks for this advice, I appreciate it.

I got flamed on a discord for showing my runtime as like 9 days or something since my last sudo pacman. What is the conventional wisdom for upgrade scheduling? I typically do like once a week but I don’t mind if it ends up being once a month. Is that bad?

I was tempted to switch to Nix but the reviews I’ve seen said it’s a lot more work than Arch and there’s less compatibility (although i find arch to not really be time intensive but I do have compatibility issues still here and there).

Just to play devil’s advocate, everything is politics. If wages were higher, if multi-millionaires didn’t exist, if you owned your home and had a larger say in your communities laws and regulations, if your anti-trust agency was doing their job, if you owned a part of your work the AI bubble would look wildly different if not be impossible in its current form. We’re seeing the effects of wild wealth concentration and financial markets detached from their underlying financial output.

That’s a ton of assumptions that I think do not hold any real water. The smartest car purchase for most urban or suburban commuters in the US (and likely most other car dependent countries) is a used EV. The best ones have heavily depreciated because of the top 10% churning their cars, they have 80-90% of their battery range (which most people don’t even need), and they cost almost nothing to own and operate.

I would argue no one should be buying a car with the intention of selling it later, because all cars depreciate terribly (COVID was a very unique circumstance).

The warranty does not care about the value of the car, it’s only for parts and repair so what you said doesn’t make any sense.

Your other point is if you buy a depreciating asset with a loan and then lose your income you’ll have a hard time paying off that loan. That’s literally true for everything in the world. No one should be buying a car they can’t afford, and definitely not with a loan they can’t safely afford. There’s always refinancing which would in your hypothetical would always be a better move as again the ongoing cost of an EV is something like 1/6th or 1/10th of a gas car.

I think you’re giving terrible advice and have been given very bad information.

That’s a good thing, is the point of this article and general wisdom. Cars last 10+ years so for the used market, the sooner the car depreciates the better. Unless you plan to sell your car, depreciation rarely matters right? You buy a car to run it into the ground, so the cheaper to start the better.