actually I think you should be normal about ordinary citizens of authoritarian countries and yes that applies even to that country you're thinking of right now
"but they support [dictator] and [violent action]!" okay is it possible that a combination of propaganda, election rigging, and authoritarian crackdowns on dissent could lead a population to look like it supports something most people would find distasteful under more reasonable circumstances
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if youre in the US (especially the northeast + michigan) i would avoid bagged salads/greens and generally wash your produce very thoroughly unless you want the diarrhea parasite
Michigan is experiencing its largest outbreak of a parasitic infection that causes severe diarrhea. Nearly 1,000 people have been diagnosed
this is not life-threatening, but also who wants weeks of diarrhea and a fucking parasite in them lol. if you suspect you've already had this and it's passed, i would see a doctor. you might need an antiparasitic anyway. if you're actively sick, see a doctor and they might be able to prescribe medication to help you get over it faster.
try to avoid eating raw vegetables, scrub fruit with a produce brush and rinse thoroughly with water. again, don't bother with premade greens or bagged salads. if you buy lettuce, remove the outer 2-3 layers of leaves.
there are UNVERIFIED rumors that the greens have been linked to a company that sources to taco bell. some locations have been actively pulling fresh ingredients like lettuce, avocado, and pico de gallo to mitigate the threat, so i would avoid any products from them just in case. considering how vast supply chains are, i'd be wary of any fast food greens in general for now.
When you try to talk about enshittification, it sounds like conspiracy theories. (I'm not crazy)
Amazon made their service worse, to force people to pay for Prime.
Nowadays, if you order from Amazon, there is a week long delay before your package is shipped. (on purpose)
I remember when orders would ship out the same day. (I remember - it was real)
YouTube didn't used to have ads. Now, ads play in the middle of videos. (it's worse than TV ever was)
The best can opener I have owned is over 40 years old. Modern ones just don't hold up as well. (The ones I bought new broke ages ago)
The bread machine my mom got for her wedding lasted 30 years. It's been replaced twice in the last 5 years. (How can you fuck this up?)
The cardboard tubes in the middle of toilet paper rolls have gotten larger. (This too?) Companies increasing the price of the product while selling you less. (REALLY?)
It sounds crazy. (it's the truth) When you talk about it, YOU sound crazy. (it's true)
Even when people believe you (do they really), all they can say is "it sucks". (it's too big) Because the problem is so big, so pervasive, what can we even DO about it???
To get the necessary laws written and passed, we need politicians, to get the politicians elected we need information campaigns, to fund campaigns we need money, and all the money is being hoarded by the people profiting from enshittification. (it sounds so fake)
So I talk about enshittification (it sounds crazy), so people don't forget that things have been made worse on purpose (it's true), even though I sound crazy. (maybe I am)
It's called planned obsolescence and it was invented when lightbulbs could still run for 1000 years. Enshittification is the web-specific (and more specifically social media) version of that.
Eh, they're related concepts, but a lot of people clearly haven't read the original article that defined it, and it shows.
Enshittification isn't planned obsolescence, which is just making things shitter by putting a time limit on how long they function. It's a feature that serves the seller and the stock holders, not the customer. Enshittification is a process, not a feature.
The beginning part of enshittification is deliberately making a better product than the nearest competitors, and giving it to people for free.
An essential part of enshittification is not merely drawing you in with something good, but making you depend on it as a key underpinning of your life. The only way you communicate with many of your friends and family (Facebook). The only way to order most items you need, when you need them (Amazon). The only way to process online payments (PayPal). The only way to get up-to-the-minute news and send out emergency messages (Twitter).
The first version of the platform (and it is specifically a platform thing - a platform being something you use to accomplish your other projects) has to be so good that virtually no one goes anywhere else anymore.
That step is like the old Starbucks thing of opening a million locations, offering a quality product, undercutting the local competition until they go out of business and you can't go anywhere else, at which point the prices rise and the quality goes down. The standard monopoly playbook.
But enshittification is more insidious than that. It's about creating a (virtual) place that you need to use not simply to get one product, but to accomplish the important things in your life.
People don't stay on Facebook because it's the only way to socially interact online - it's not! People are trapped using Facebook even though they hate it because their elderly parents and high school friends use it and won't use anything else.
People don't leave Amazon because when you rely on deliveries (eg you are disabled, you live somewhere rural, you need a package your next day or your boss will kill you), with a Prime account, it's the only way to accomplish what you need. AND it's the only way to watch a lot of your favourite TV shows, or access Kindle Unlimited books etc. When I choose between, say, Disney+ and Prime, I reflect that both companies suck, but Prime gets me free and fast deliveries that include everything from groceries to medicines to compost. I am disabled. When I can I order from somewhere else. But relatively frequently I can't. So right now I have Prime and not Disney+.
Enshittification isn't just about eliminating the competition, it's about *trapping* you into using something that gets worse and worse while being the only way for you to get things that are genuinely important. They make you live your life through them by taking indirect ownership of intangible things, like vital pathways to maintain your friendships, and then once they have you, they count on the combination of inertia and the value you place on those intangible things to keep you there no matter how bad it gets.
So I, who have never liked Facebook, even right at the start when I had to sign up to accept a party invitation, am still there, despite everything, because a whole bunch of my friends, my publishing network contacts, and my family, will not go anywhere else. They just won't leave. So leaving Facebook, for me, means severing contact with hundreds of people, some of whom are extremely important to me.
That's enshittification. It's the process by which they make sure you don't leave when it gets shit.
And yeah, the only way to tackle this is to regulate the fucking tech companies. Tell your MP.
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I don't know who needs to hear this but you need to stop dehumanising people even if those people are "abusers" or "creeps" because you need to understand that you are not immune to doing something equally as bad
Abusers and creeps are not some species of especially heinous animal or alien or monster wearing the face of a human. They're people. And you NEED to drill it into your head that they are people because you NEED to remember that people are capable of doingn heinous shit. And you are a person. And your loved ones are people.
By emotionally classifying people who have done heinous things as subhuman filth incapable of thinking and feeling and acting just like you and me, and by using that emotional dehumanization as a reason to deny those people any compassion or support on a systemic level, you risk becoming blind to abuse/violence perpetrated by someone close to you or even yourself. Because if "abusers don't deserve rights", then you won't ever want to admit or accept that you or a loved one is perpetrating abuse, and that makes stopping the abuse or preventing further abuse much harder. This is how you end up excuaing abusive behaviour on the grounds that, since you don't see someone as a disgusting subhuman pile of garbage therefore they can't possibly be An Abuser, Trademark
And here'a the even harder pill to swallow: since the world isn't split into "abusers" and "good people", in the same way you or someone you love can inflict abuse/violence on others, the people who HAVE inflicted abuse/violence on others can, in fact, change and become better people
There is no bottomless chasm of moral uncleanliness that someone can run off and fall into and get stuck in forever. People can do better. Yes, even those people. You HAVE to accept this. Otherwise not only is there no motivation for anyone to try and do better (which is when people become stuck in a cycle of violence and abuse they don't want to escape), but your idea of a perfect justice system doesn't look any different from Literal Christian Hell. And I HOPE you understand that Literal Christian Hell is, to put it very lightly, not a good justice system.
so when i was a kid a read this story where a boy gets turned into a mouse by evil witches. at the end (spoilers) him and his beloved grandmother manage to slaughter all the witches but they do NOT manage to turn him back to a human child. he stays a mouse. the grandmother rebuilds her home to be mouse accessible. and they discuss the fact that he's aging like a mouse, so he probably only has a few years to live; but it's ok, because the grandmother confesses that she ALSO only has a few years to live and they both agree that they wouldn't want to live without the other. So everything is alright then, and they're happy, and that's the end of the story. it's probably been over two decades since i read it and quite frankly i am still processing the intertwining concepts of love and mortality but anyway that's not my point. my point is that Rocky did not die of acute radiation sickness because he spent enough time shielded by astrophage that his body was able to handle the damage, but holy shit does he have every type of cancer. he didn't die entering grace's atmosphere but all of his organs caught fire. I repeat β his internal organs caught fire. he spent several decades in a low gravity environment. Do you know what human bodies do in low gravity? it's not good man. 20% muscle loss in two weeks. 1% bone density loss every month. Maybe carapaces and low organic matter would handle the change better, but idk, it might actually be worse.
anyway my point is, actually, i do think that Rocky and Grace would get to grow old together.
i know i'm op but op the idea of Grace arriving at Erid on the verge of death, recovering, and then living a long and full (maybe not especially healthy) life, vs Rocky arriving home a trimphant hero, a miraculous survivor of a thousand calamaties only to at long last have to pay the toll, dying tragically young, I'm.
Rocky and Grace jokingly comparing the pros and cons of bipedal vs pentapedal joint pain. Rocky wearing the xenonite exo-suit because it actually helps keep his carapace from collapsing to the ground. Grace affectionately bumping his cane against it in morse code because of course their stupid ernglish pidgin isn't enough; now that everyone know english they also need a secret language that's just for them.
Grace in his motorized bubble scooter touring the city. Naturally, Rocky's going to keep him company by riding in the stupid sidecar, how would he explain everything if he was walking beside him? And of course Rocky's telling people to repeat things and his voice is weirdly pitchy, Grace is there and human hearing is awful. It would be rude to talk normally.
Rocky pulling out the old hamster ball and curling up inside. And he knows, he knows its bad posture, but right now it hurts less. Grace curled up around him, the exterior of the ball a carefully calibrated 39 C. They are both hiding from well meaning physical therapists. Whispering doesn't actually do anything in that regard, but Rocky finds whispering hilarious for some reason (Eridian equiv of helium infused squeaky voice).
Gravity as Erid's love for them, a painful embrace they wouldn't trade for anything.
They get to grow old together. It's not enough time, but its so much more than they thought they would have; it's surprisingly easy to be okay with it. It's a tragedy from every angle except perhaps the inside.
#whatever you do don't think about adrien ok#adrien got him back. They got to see him again. There's 23 other mates who can't say the same#i think there's a world with pebbles and an affectionate blobby uncle#but in this one the infertility is the first warning that he's maybe not okay#(of course rocky avoided mentioning the chronic pain - he'd been living with most of it for decades at this point)#(and for the first year or 2 he's dead serious about getting Every doctor to work on Grace. Like at first you think hes being hyperbolic#But theres a solid period where rocky is genuinely indignant at the concept of any doctor anywhere working on someone who isn't grace#Yes he knows other people need doctors too.#but also did you consider that they can fucking wait question???)#Anyway#In the end#In the end rocky falls asleep with grace watching. a few hours go by. and then a few more.#and then grace figures rocky won't mind if he rests his eyes for just a minute.#and neither of them have to mourn.
Fucked up that if you make a minor social blunder you can't ask the person if they hate you forever now because that within itself is another social blunder
grace, who has been alone for five minutes: oh my god. an alien! im not alone anymore! i hope he wants to be friends :)
rocky, coming up on 50 years of solitude, imprinting on grace in ways baby ducklings can only dream of: if you leave me to sleep where i can't watch your heart beat i am blowing up this tunnel with us both in it
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And what if rap WAS only about sex, violence, and drugs... what then? Would you be justified in looking down upon it as not being "real" art? What would your justification be? Sex is immoral and taboo? Drugs should never be mentioned outside of D.A.R.E programs? Songs about violence turn children to it? Would you turn that standard to other genres as well? I know you wouldn't, I know you haven't, because it's never really been about the topics explored.
it's very funny to me that the advice in the notes divides cleanly into two camps:
Actually actionable advice (break it down into smaller pieces, leave and come back later, find somebody to do it with you so you aren't doing it alone)
People who are Jared, 19 and just say something that's fundamentally a variation on "just do it scared"
Warning: advice that "you have to leave your comfort zone to grow" is meant for people who are IN their comfort zone the majority of the time. If you rarely/never feel comfortable and safe, you actually need to get more comfortable and safe before you can grow π