I was just talking about YouTube last night! It’s easy to forget the mind bending amount of data uploaded and stored every single day. It is impossible to draw a comparison to anything that has ever come before. And it will all have to go away at some point, as far as I’m concerned. It’s untenable to keep more than a tiny fraction of it. There is so much interesting stuff… and the site has existed for the blink of an eye. Nobody can consume a meaningful amount of the information stored on it, nobody could possibly categorize and manage a system of valuation and sortation. Barring a radical reorganization of economic system and values, any sort of proposed YouTube Archival Project never makes a dent. And files are only getting bigger… crazy to think that my kids will likely never get through the amount of photos and videos of my childhood that exist, yet I currently possess all of the photographic proof of my mom’s parents’ existence in the back of a small drawer.

I don’t particularly agree with the concept of the privately owned park and feel that it has ruined the social lives of Americans, since they’re no longer allowed to “loiter” (exist) anywhere outside of work and home. And also, yes, I think you should have to maintain the property you’ve taken away from the surrounding community or else give it back. I don’t think the comparison to the Web necessarily holds up, but I do think that people’s contributions to a website remain theirs even if you pay a lawyer to write down that it’s not. The concept of complete forfeiture of any claim to your work because-I-said-so is very made up. Your hard work is not.

And both of which impact its users’ lives, thus why the users feel they should have a say in what’s done with the space, even if they aren’t the owners of the space

In the spirit of offering feedback I disagree, pop-ups are terrible design, super abrasive and make the experience worse no matter when they show up

As opposed to the main company, which cares so much that they don’t bother taking your call directly

Sorry, but two disagreements—good food is trivial to find when you travel in Italy lol and American bread is bad without question

The whole wide world of authors who have written about the difficulties of this new technological age and you choose the one who had to pretend her work was unpopular

I thought I wanted a dumber phone. Not a flip phone necessarily, but not a pocket supercomputer. I looked at the majority of options out there and concluded that (ignoring the ones that are basically just running Android) they’re all missing a feature or two I really like, like the Light Phone looks great but I listen to audiobooks on Libby all the time. So then I just decided to delete a bunch of stuff from my iPhone, and then I didn’t get around to that so I still just have the same phone. 🤦‍♀️

I tend to disagree with your opinion here. There is a level of objectivity within the realm of taste. I will continue to warn people not to eat pea gravel even if it has a great mouthfeel, for instance.

The plot is less complex than it appears at face value, because at face value most people are lacking the dialogue that despite Nolan’s protestations has a lot of valuable information within it. Is it great art because he makes you suffer for it? Is The Prestige worse because it’s enjoyable to rewatch?

Well, maybe the first generation or two wouldn’t suck if they had consulted people who use wheelchairs and know how they should be designed. Too bad they thought the same way you do and said ‘why bother’!

To be clear, just because the LSD experiments happened does not make them reasonable. It sounds like you’re justifying future terrible mistakes based on past terrible mistakes that you learn about in a fairly neutral and sanitized way in school.

Good to see the true feelings of this community reflected in such quick fashion. ‘That one quote’ is a pretty lengthy diatribe, and it’s far from his only time. But the sick comeback makes white moderates feel better about themselves

MLK Jr., famous for talking about how much he loves white moderates right

If Stephen King wants to share his accumulated wisdom for free with millions of readers, hopeful artists, random people on the street who’ve never heard of him, what is the best way to reach them? Start a blog that will never show up in any search results behind the pages of machine-generated SEO junk about how they have answers for “Stephen King blog”, right? Because then he had zero impact but retains the moral high ground.

To your last point, yes, affirmative action is the term the U.S. has decided on for programs such as that one. There may be newer phrases in use, I don’t know for certain.

I would agree on the ‘lazy’ argument. It certainly feels like we could do better. But that always seems to be true!

I have on a personal level had to learn to avoid letting perfection get in the way of improvement. Whether that is broadly applicable to policy is debatable—I would welcome much more radical change, but I also feel as though radical action in one direction spurs more radical opposition. For instance, Biden tried to forgive $430 billion in student debt in the U.S. and it was in the news, argued over, eventually stopped due to some absurd court cases—yet he and his administration have successfully gotten about $132 billion forgiven in other avenues, step by step, with much less fanfare and thus (in my mind) much less opposition as well.

In regards to the German Green Party, and to for the moment ignore the question of additional genders, I thought that there were currently two co-leaders, one man one woman? If that is not the case, and even if it is, I assume the argument would be along the lines of ‘women have been underrepresented for so long that it is reasonable to give them a stretch of overrepresentation in order to bring a semblance of balance around.’ Or ‘other parties are mostly led by men so we will be led by women for some semblance of balance.’ Neither concept seems crazy to me.

And on the question of alternative gender presentations I think the issue is one of how to enact the greatest good for the largest number of people. The rights and representation of trans, non-binary, etc. peoples matter very much to me, knowing several such people personally! But collectively they do at the moment make up a small portion of the population. I think they should be encouraged to do whatever it is they want with their lives. If that is to pursue office with the Green Party, so be it. Such a thing seems like it may take a change in language to ‘allow’. But it does not mean the rules are bad conceptually or that they need to be thrown out—more inclusive language seems like a small change that does not require a change in the direction of progress.

That’s the ‘affirmative’ side of affirmative action—taking an action like encouraging trans people to run for office. Temporarily banning men from holding office wouldn’t really fall under the umbrella in spirit I suppose, but isn’t the outcome the same, and thus whether or not you take offense at the concept a personal choice, or at least worthy of a philosophical debate?

Visiting again the concept of laziness: just appointing women to leadership positions does not make everything fair. For instance, the disabled may suffer more social exclusion under female leadership, because women tend to see disabled children in terms of the additional child raising work they represent (of course, mostly men’s fault for pigeonholing women as homemakers). But this is a reason to improve the course we are on. It is okay to critique, to point out the ways that things are not going the right way. For instance, feel free to complain about how the focus on social justice overshadows the larger issues of economic injustice that hold everybody down! Feel free to point out groups that are being forgotten. Individuals who benefit from affirmative action and then turn around and preach self sufficiency. Personally, I think men’s mental health will need to be a bigger focus! It’s clearly an issue, and since they’re still mostly in charge it’ll probably benefit us all if they get some help. Whatever your critique, it should be in the spirit of fostering a world where your genitals or skin color or the neighborhood you’re born in does not determine your life’s course.

But it should not critique the concept. We should not reverse course and say “we were wrong, put men back in charge of everything and don’t let brown people live here.” And that is what I think being against affirmative action means. It means “no thanks, I am okay with the deal as it stands.” The deal as it stands, where in the United States you can accurately predict someone’s income just by knowing what ZIP code they were born in; where despite Hillary Clinton’s career women are underrepresented lucrative fields like the sciences because they’re still expected to put their future on hold to raise a couple’s children; where despite Barack Obama’s success black men are more than four times as likely to have felony convictions than white, taking the community’s right to vote away. That means, whether the person saying it is part of the in-group or a well-off member of a minority group, that they have enough, and aren’t interested in helping others get enough. I’d be embarrassed to say something like that.

Sorry I rambled on so much, I am “stealing time” at my job and lost my train of thought a few times as I left and revisited this comment. :)

Well unfortunately, the overlap is close enough to a circle that it makes plenty of sense, especially since the issue is not purely economic, but social, as you accidentally point out by using the phrase socioeconomic. Obama has wealth that is unfathomable to the everyday person, as does Clinton—both deal with a society that belittles them because of who they are in a way that white men don’t face, rich or poor.

Surely you’ve noticed that Obama is the only black president so far, despite black people making up 10 to 20% of the population over the last few centuries.

You are also aware that Clinton would have been the first female U.S. President. She won the popular vote by a significant margin, which is a great sign for public opinion on women, but the reality is still that women, who are more than half the country, are not more than half in charge of it.

The fact these two got as far as they did is in no small part thanks to the concept of affirmative action, where we try to right past wrongs and level the playing field. Encourage women to go into nontraditional fields, encourage black students to apply for Ivy League schools and ensure there are spots for them—these things only “hurt” white men because resources are so artificially limited already, disproportionately held by the tiny percentage of [rich white men] who control the US’s giant conglomerates and obedient politicians, and regular old white men aren’t used to feeling the squeeze.

Did Obama pull the ladder up behind him somewhat by applying the same neoliberal bullshit that has destroyed the concept of compassionate social safety nets in favor of a more competitive marketplace? Can you be mad at him? Yeah. That’s beside the point. White people have been allowed to fuck over other white people for ages.

Without citing specific examples, it sounds like you just don’t like affirmative action programs, which is an opinion I’d be embarrassed to say out loud. When one group of people has all the money and all the connections, it’s not fair to say “just treat everyone equally!” because it maintains the unequal status quo—poorer minority groups continue getting into schools at lower rates since they live in poorer neighborhoods with poorer schools and poorer access to the funds needed for higher education, women continue getting passed up for management positions, leading to more male dominated companies hiring more men for more management positions, et cetera

It’s great that it’s obvious to you. It is. Glad you’re protected on the internet. Unfortunately, if you’re arguing with people who are savvy enough to be on the fediverss yet find it confusing, then there are many less savvy people, let’s say older folks, whom Google will be serving malware links. Is this not a problem? It’s their fault for not being, what, born later?

You’ve never heard of someone buying music on iTunes?

Actually professor I don’t much care to continue. I asked if all the cards are on the table (because I know they’re not) and you responding with “yes…?” so this isn’t going to go anywhere. Especially since I don’t have a favorite -ism to provide you with so you can tell me how it would never work!

The ideas I’ve presented force cooperation in opposition to capitalist market forces. They coexist in the way my white blood cells coexist with the flu.

By the way, the Panama Papers aren’t available to the public, and they’re culturally relevant because they were secret for so long, and represent an opportunity that isn’t on the table for the rest of us. Better examples are key when upholding the status quo 👌