Swordgeek

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  • 70 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 15th, 2023

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  • I’m nearly three times your age and so will likely have a very different perspective, but…

    I remember watching the news (from Canada) when Reagan was first elected. it felt HORRIBLE, and turned out to be just that - Reagan, Thatcher, and their psychophant hanger-on Mulroney ushered in a new era of “get fucked by the rich, fuck the poor” also known as trickle-down economics.

    And yet, there was always a sense of decorum among them. Even Harper and Bush jr. at least pretended to be civil in the world of politics, no matter how corrupt and evil they were.

    Trump changed everything. He was loud, abrasive, offensive, and off the rails. And he won! Suddenly the doors were open. Here in Canada, O’Toole did outhouse attack ads against Trudeau. Jingoistic, vapid, fear-mongering populism took root throughout Europe. And it just kept getting worse.

    Now this election in the US was unhinged beyond description. Trump said things and did things that should have gotten him locked up. Musk should be facing either life in jail or the electric chair for his interference. There are no limits in American elections anymore - I would genuinely say including shooting someone onstage.

    Here in Canada, Poilievre has been carefully fanning the same embers - stoking fear, instilling rage, creating groups to hate; and at the same time, throwing out meaningless attacks on his opponents. Unlike when O’Toole awkwardly attempted it, it is working very effectively. Having an entire room or stadium chanting “AXE THE TAX” without even offering an alternative shows that he’s winning by being the same empty bully as Trump.

    (And meanwhile, Harper is chortling quietly from behind the curtain as he pulls the puppet strings.)

    So yeah, this is crazy - and it’s the new normal, until we start showing politicians that it doesn’t work, and can get them arrested.




  • Unless you make voting mandatory, that will always be the case. Regardless, the split amongst non-voters is statistically likely to be the same as the people who actually voted. Consider the election to be an information poll, with a sample size of ~65% of the entire eligible population.

    So with updated numbers, Trump got 72.5M out of ~240M eligible voters, so yeah you could say that 70% of the population didn’t vote for him. But then to be clear, you should also look at Harris’s 68M votes, and say that 72% of the population didn’t vote for her.

    The people who mark and deposit their ballots are the only measure we have of the nation’s opinion, and in that contest a majority of the votes went to Trump.




  • Honestly, a person’s actual post history should be more relevant and indicative to whether they’renworth engaging with tham a single number.

    Furthermore, aside from deliberate trolls, most comments or posts should be assessed on their own merits, irrespective of the poster’s history.

    People are complex, and it’s possible that raving political idiots might have thoughtful opinions on their favourite video game or the aspects that make a perfect butt.






  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
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    toAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldDo you prefer ads or paywalls?
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    27 days ago

    Apple is worth THREE AND A HALF TRILLION DOLLARS!!!

    Say that again. Three and a half trillion dollars.

    They have cash-on-hand reserves of in excess of $60bn. They could give every single employee $200,000 and still have half of it in the bank.

    Tim Cook is a relative pauper in the CEO game, with a net worth upwards of two billion. He could personally pay a team of a three thousand reporters with full benefits and remain a billionaire.

    It’s not people refusing to pay for journalism, it’s robber barons refusing to pay journalists.


  • People always have.

    How many people get paid to go to ham radio clubs, to write up plans for model airplanes, or to share telescope mirror polishing techniques? How many people try to profit off of community seed/plant exchanges?

    The only difference is that people are now looking for venues to generate profit by producing content, rather than producing content for its own sake. The concept of “every sharing of information must be financially profitable” is a sickness - a festering disease.

    Domain names cost about $50/year. Self-hosting can be done for free with most ISPs; and if you’re getting enough traffic that you need to pay for hosting, it starts pretty cheaply.

    Profit is destroying community at every turn. Resist the relentless lust to make an extra buck, and ENGAGE with people.


  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
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    toAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldDo you prefer ads or paywalls?
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    27 days ago

    No, you really really really don’t.

    I’m old enough to have been online when commercial content was illegal, and I’ve watched as aggressive commerce has crept into every single corner of the internet.

    You don’t need to have ads to support a website, you need ads to profit from a website. The idea that everything - information, news, community, society - not only CAN be monetized but MUST be monetized is relatively new, destructive, and anti-human.

    The mere idea that you have to choose between two ways of throwing money at billionaires is a symptom of the terminal stages of capitalism. We’re going to have a rough 50 years or so, but this has to end.


  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
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    toAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldDo you prefer ads or paywalls?
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    27 days ago

    Yeah, “good journalism” is definitely what you’re paying for with ads or paywalls.

    To be clear, I support journalists - and they deserve to get paid for their efforts.

    But (a) OP didn’t specifically mention news sites, and (b) the revenue from websites via ads or paywalls is going directly into the coffers of the ultra-wealthy. Find me a news outlet that successfully implemented a paywall and then started paying their journalists and reporters vastly more money.

    You won’t, because they don’t.