We have all just accepted the term “Human Resources” as something that I guess we aren’t going to revolt against

I’ve heard it’s a generational divide thing between “you’re welcome” and “no problem.” I’m an older millennial and tend to use “you’re welcome” in more formal settings and “no problem” in more casual settings.

I use “no worries” if someone is apologizing but sometimes I suppose if someone is thanking me for some slight inconvenience I’ll also use “no worries.”

I read an article that older generations think “no problem” is a rude replacement for “you’re welcome” which is funny because they mean the same thing. The thing you are telling the person they are welcome to is your help and time because it was not a problem.

Don’t worry, he seems hard at work making sure all that Tesla stock he got will also be worth less everyday.

In case you are wanting the history. IBM actually coined the term PC with their IBM Personal Computers

At the time most computing platforms were incompatible. Software written for a commodore computer wouldn’t work with an apple computer wouldn’t work with an IBM PC.

The IBM PC was popular enough though that people started building “pc compatible” machines. A very popular configuration for this was intel chips with Microsoft DOS. While these machines started out as “pc compatible” after a while the IBM PC wasn’t a big deal anymore so saying “we are compatible with a machine released in 1981” just slowly morphed into “it’s a PC” as shorthand for “intel chipset with Microsoft OS”

Now why didn’t apple get the pc moniker? At the time when the IBM PC launched apple was actively building and selling their own computers and weren’t interested in making them IBM PC clones so they never went out and marketed themselves as “pc compatible” because for the most part they were not.

Thanks for attending my Ted talk

The maquis end up, in my opinion, as supremely unlikeable. Of course our exposure to them is through the federation lens, but in the abstract it is hard to understand how they can be the good guys.

From what we understand, the federation is a post scarcity society due to replicators. The maquis origins, as I understand it, is that to broker peace between the federation and cardassians some planets swapped ownership. The maquis are the displaced people from planets that shifted to cardassian control.

Ok, losing your planet sucks. Now whether or not these figures are sympathetic hinges on the federations accommodations to them. The federation offered to relocate them to other planets. They are federation citizens so they can go to any developed world in the federation or start a new colony, replicating whatever they need.

How did they respond? By going “no this patch of land is super duper important for some reason that no one will ever be able to explain” and refuse to leave. Then they begin terrorizing the cardassians for trying to settle the planets that were agreed to. Threatening the peace and stability of a space utopia society because they want to hold their breathe and stamp their feet and not sit in a shuttle craft for a day and go to some other of the vast countless planets in the universe they have access to.

Billions upon billions of federation and cardassian lives at risk so some jackass can keep farming a plot of land indistinguishable from the replacement plot of land he’s being offered for free. Oh and also he doesn’t fucking need to farm anything at all this is like a hobby or some shit because they have replicators.

Sisko was right to launch the tricobalt devices at their colonies and the federation should enlisted him to go Sherman on those traitors.

I realized the other day about how much I’ve internalized the violence of capitalism. I was driving down the road and there was a man with a sign that said he was hungry and needed help and my first reflexive feeling was annoyance.

That’s insane, that’s monstrous, that made me stop.

Here is a human being, standing there just holding a sign and I’m annoyed, even angry at them. The system is set up so that there will be people that can’t be exploited by capital and that’s their lot, to stand on the side of the road begging for scraps.

You see it so frequently in capitalism that your choices are to be sad for them, be angry at them, or ignore them entirely.

Maybe I wasn’t annoyed or angry at that man, but at myself for hardening my heart to his plight, and at the system we are stuck in that put him there.

I think even a young child could understand “we don’t talk like that” I don’t really see the alternative as particularly more gentle.

If a young child is figuring out what “self” is, I think it would be even better to provide them guidance that could help them answer that question. “Please use kind language” is just a request / order, I imagine someone might think it’s more gentle because it contains the word “please” but I’m not really sure

I think either phrase could be delivered in a gentle or aggressive manner. I would support telling a child “we speak kindly to others” as a sort of middle ground. Even better would be to explain the importance of this value to them “we speak kindly to others. It’s important that we treat each other with kindness” and then to follow up any questions about why, to provide space for the child to understand the value you want to communicate instead of just the instruction.

I do think raising up a child with kindness is good, but our children will not always have an adult nearby to tell them to be nice. Our goal should be to give them the values that guide their conduct in our absence and help them navigate the world.

There’s a weird feel from this comic for me. I’m glad that these two people could have an amicable divorce. I think the thing that feels off is how casual the decision feels in the comic. I suspect this might be why some people are having a negative reaction as well.

Even if you think marriage isn’t forever, it’s still a promise to love and care about someone, to cherish them and share your life with them. I think if you’ve been in a marriage and seen your loved one through hard times together, this comic just feels capricious. A discussion about ending such an important component of your life happening in the span of two panels in a car ride just feels abrupt and unserious.

I imagine in real life the conversation was more serious and the impact of changing you relationship from one of romantic love to friendship weighed on both parties more than the comic has space to show.

If you’ve loved and supported your spouse through difficult and unexpected change or been the recipient of that love and support, this comic can feel dismissive. If you’ve gone through the heartache of losing your special person, even if they are still a part of your life, the celebratory tone sounds wrong.

I am happy that they can separate and still care about each other, but I also understand why people feel like something is wrong about the comic.

I always tip my hair cutting person 100%. I wanted a hair cut, the hair cut cost $x, that person literally does the entire thing often with their own equipment that they paid for. The place will charge me $x because that’s what the haircut is worth to me but I know the person that actually physically cut my hair with their skills and labor won’t get $x and I think that’s bullshit.

In many other kinds of transactions someone can go “oh well the business deserves a cut of the profits because they provided the ingredients, or they stocked the inventory, or yadda yadda yadda”. But the hair cut is the one place where with my own eyes I witness the full body of labor occur and see who does it. That person deserves the value that their labor produced, not some owner sitting off in their beach house doing plenty I’m sure but one thing I’m damn sure they aren’t doing is cutting my fucking hair.

People act in accordance with their notion of identity. There was a study about voting that showed that getting people to identify themselves as a voter resulted in statistically significant increase in them actually voting than asking them if they would vote or having them pledge to vote.

For this reason I take issue with replacing “we don’t talk like that” with “please use kind words”

The former helps form the child’s identity as a person with values, one of which, is not using mean words. The latter is a plea to abide by the parent’s values.

It is not cruel to raise your child to have values and to instill those values. I would argue it is cruel to deprive a child of those core values and replace it with some sort of obedience to authority which is what the updated phrase instills.

TIL updated my post to reflect that

“Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3 while 1/3 watches.”—Incorrectly attributed to Werner Herzog but just some random person on the internet it seems.

Still the quote makes sense even without the appeal to authority

Thanks, TheReturnOfPEB for correcting me

Ok so to summarize.

We both think his position on Israel is a shit position that imperils his election.

Few questions for you in good faith.

1. How many voters do you think he loses in the other position. There are a lot of democratic voters that do strongly support Israel and might be put off by him pulling support of denouncing them. They could stay at home or withhold donations also imperiling his chances of winning the election.
2. What do you mean by “if progressives are loud enough.” What does that loudness look like? In 2020 you had Warren with popular support and Sanders turning out 50k people to rallies, that’s pretty frightening to a candidate and could get them to make concessions to bring them into the fold. The democrats aren’t running a primary (in any meaningful way) so what does “being loud” look like. Is it just posting wherever you can, is it some direct action, a protest, a rally? What about it would be more successful than the student led protests we see on college campuses that don’t seem to be doing much to sway Biden or his inner circle?
3. What do you think about the possible negative effects of such action? Are you concerned at all that there is some non-zero number of people that would have voted for Biden but see enough negative content they decide to sit it out unable to stomach voting for him?

Honestly I wish I had your optimism that we could work towards making a substantial change here to the course of events. I find what’s happening reprehensible, monstrous even. I took part in the Iraq war protests, took a bus from Ohio to DC to march in what was at the time one of the largest protests. Got there and was pepper sprayed by Capitol police but stayed in the fight, organized protests in Columbus in support of Medicare for all. I still work in my local community to try to make things better, but I found that “being loud’ even being historically loud didn’t move the needle because the system they taught me in school about how America works and the reality of how America really works are so different. Our representatives spend more time dialing for dollars calling up and begging the donor class for donations than they do legislating.

That’s the perspective I come into this with, almost 30 years of being told to organize, protest, vote. That the pendulum would swing back. Go read some of the comments on any YouTube video covering campus protests, see how much glee the right takes from watching the police crack down on them. What should we do when the tools they tell you will lead to your freedom energize your opponents and leave the people that supposedly represent you unmoved?

Ok, but concretely, how do you want to do that? This meme?

I believe you, you think that Biden’s support for Israel will ensure his defeat. What do you think could get him to change his position, I highly doubt he’s browsing lemmy.

I get your frustration and I read some of your other comments and I don’t really disagree with you. The thing is, the people disagreeing with you in this thread agree with the deeper concern. I’m concerned that Biden’s support for Israel will make him lose too. I don’t believe there is anything the voting public can do to change that support. I believe that support has been bought and paid for by the capitalists that want that support for whatever awful reason they have, and that our shambling “plutocracy in democracy clothing” means we won’t be able to change that.

So I look at the line you are pushing and I think, what are the likely outcomes of this effort.

• Biden retracting his support for Israel, no.
• Some people on lemmy getting disenchanted and sitting home, maybe.
• The horse race obsessed media running endless stories about Biden losing the left and the youth vote, which while true, act as a flywheel suppressing more voters, absolutely

And I just can’t figure out the point. Maybe you are more optimistic than me, maybe you still believe that shouting into the social media zone could swell a grassroots rebellion, get Biden to change his stance, and secure his victory. I just have a hard time believing it.

Now if you told me you were going to start a super pac and throw 10s of millions of dollars at the campaign but only if they move on Israel, yea, that could work. Shitposting here isn’t doing anything but demoralizing pragmatic leftists that understand what a shitty fucking dumpster fire of a system we have and are also worried Biden’s unwavering support for Israel is going to fuck us all over. And I struggle to understand who that helps

I’m a progressive, volunteered for Bernie’s campaigns. I don’t remember electing you to speak for me, maybe you don’t have your finger so squarely on the pulse of every single progressive.

I plan to vote for Biden, am I excited about it, no. Is the Democratic Party going to put up anyone else, no. Would me holding back my vote matter, no.

There is no world where “not voting for the least bad option” equals anything other than the most bad option winning. You can be upset that that’s the word you happen to find yourself in, no one asked me if having to pick between the two jackboots of the capital class was how we should arrange things either.

One thing I haven’t heard is what’s the alternative. You have my full attention, what would you actually concretely hope to have happen. Let’s say you could convince a large number of Democratic Party voters to follow your lead, what would you have them do?

Perhaps watching the Democratic Party leadership gut the chances of Sanders twice to put up boring ass garbage candidates has hardened my heart. Would you have them sit out the primary convention, great Biden still wins because of super delegates. Would you have them protest and hold back their votes in November, great trump wins. Is there some other thing that’s supposed to happen? What’s the plan?

Based on your interpretation every group could simply be redefined into illegitimate.

• We are for democracy
• Oh so you think that monarchy is bad and you want to define yourself as excluding loyal subjects of the king! That will never be legitimate.

Leftist think that democracy should extend into the economic realm as well and what we should do with the means of production should be governed by the people and not just whoever happens to own the capital. One way to word that would be anti-capitalist, but another way would be to word it as economic democracy.

So if you require an inclusive definition for something to be legitimate, there you go. Liberals in America do not seek to do away with capitalism, you would be hard pressed to find any that do. If you support capitalism, then by the fact that capitalism’s private ownership is mutually exclusive with democratic control of the economy, you don’t support a democratic control of the economy.

You can’t have a vegan meat eater, not because of any moral assessment on veganism or meat eating, but because those two terms are mutually exclusive.

Yea a lot of economic thinkers have tried to define capital.

I tend to think of capital mostly in the terms of means of production. Capital comprises the things that make things. But different economic thinkers draw different boundaries.

I think regardless of where you draw the boundaries the idea of capitalism is an interesting one, one where you let private individuals own those things. There are definitely parts that become almost philosophical. Take for instance mining rights. The mountain sits there for millennia, completely unowned. Then one day some people show up. No one owns that mountain, if people need rocks from the mountain anyone can walk up there and take them. Then you get enough people together and they say “together we are a nation, our nation owns that mountain.” Then capitalism does this neat magic trick where the nation can sell the mountain to one of the people in the nation and then he owns the mountain. You need a rock from the mountain, too damn bad, Greg bought the mountain and now you have to buy your rocks from him.

When you strip away all the abstractions we put up, it’s kinda wild. I find capitalism’s frequent marriage to democracy to be kinda fascinating too because the systems are sorta in opposition. When no one owned the mountain, all were free to take rocks, one could argue they vote with their rock collecting hands, that’s quite democratic. Once the nation claims the mountain, if that nation were democratic, the people could vote on the best way to use the rocks and that’s quite democratic too. But once the nation sells it to Greg, the fate of the mountain is in Greg’s hands. The people have no further say in the mountain or how much rocks cost or anything really, it is the least democratic outcome.

I remember back in 2015 people were saying that trump was saying that he would build a wall and Mexico would pay for it. I thought, “I wonder what he actually said that got chopped up and editorialized this way?”

Every day after that has been me realizing that if you dig any deeper on the stupid shit it just gets stupider. We will kill off the planet because one time trump bought a cheap led bulb that didn’t flatter his natural orange glow quite enough and now we can only have coal fired power plants. Every stupid thing he says has an even stupider story behind it which itself probably has an even stupider story behind that and on and on. It’s truly astounding

Capitalism is just the idea that capital is privately owned and the economy is loosely organized around that concept.

From the IMF

In a capitalist economy, capital assets—such as factories, mines, and railroads—can be privately owned and controlled, labor is purchased for money wages, capital gains accrue to private owners, and prices allocate capital and labor between competing uses

If you compare this to something like socialism which says that capital assets should be held by the society at large. There is no one guy that can own a mine but the mine is owned by society at large.

Capitalism often likes to wear the clothes of “free markets” because most people like the idea of freedom. Not a lot of people are super keen on the idea that “some rich guy should be allowed to own all the railroads if he wants” (unless you are a rich guy that owns a bunch of railroads) so capitalists like to conflate capitalism and the free market as though they are one inseparable idea.

Other economic systems can also have free markets with collective ownership. Worker cooperatives, for example, exist within capitalist economies.

The existence of a stock market is not actually needed for capitalism. The people that own the means of production don’t necessarily need to set up a system where people can purchase a share of their companies. It might be an emergent property of capitalism, if people don’t want to start their own profit generating enterprises but want to share in the gains of a profit generating enterprise they would be willing buyers. People with profit generating enterprises might be willing sellers if they think they could over time generate more profit by raising capital from the stock buyers. But if you didn’t have a stock market and private individuals controlled the capital assets of your society, by definition you’d still be capitalist since that’s the defining characteristic.

As an example you could outlaw all financial instruments in America and as long as I can still own a factory and sell my goods for a profit, it would still be capitalism.

I think economic systems are fascinating. We often colloquially conflate various things that tend to happen together but really aren’t related at all. Of course if I hold the capital assets I would want you to associate capitalism with the positive aspects of a free market and sorta ignore the part where I get to own the capital asset and charge everyone else to have access to it.

What with the Clintons proven track record of… checks notes… losing miserably to trump. I don’t know why anyone would listen