woah

But as much as I find the economic anxieties sympathetic, I just can't sympathize with existential crises about this sort of thing. I remember, when I was young, feeling reflexive disdain for chess players unmoored from their sense of the world and human excellence when computers surpassed them, and I have that same feeling when I read about people thrown into existential despair at seeing AI equal or surpass them at what they think of as "their thing". It's never wise to support your ego by only one or two pillars, and there's a latent arrogance in taking for granted that such a thing could never happen.

I have not read and assessed the quality of the study itself. I'm not a doctor and have only a small amount of familiarity with neuroscience through my linguistics postgrad. I'd be interested to hear a more qualified take on this study.

as with basically every study on the topic of "screens and kid brains", this one:

doesn't differentiate between types of screen-based activities

is correlational, not experimental, and doesn't control for obvious confounding variables

which makes it basically useless.

take, for example, the existence of tablet apps that are specifically meant for children and parents to use to read together. if "reading with parents" is the actual underlying variable impacting white matter growth, then the medium (screen vs paper) might not matter at all!

and yet, murderers and other violent offenders do not have their full names, faces, and addresses put on a public database for the rest of their lives. there is no such thing. they are not legally barred from watching movies containing violence, or owning imagery containing violence

This post is about rapists.

The sex offender registry is not bad because innocent people are on it. It is bad because it is a gross abuse of human rights. Rapists are human beings. They deserve human rights. They deserve privacy. They deserve free access to media. They deserve the opportunity to grow and change.

I would like you to remember that Paralympions are OLYMPIC LEVEL ATHLETES.

How would it feel if I compared your output to that of a literal olympic athlete and used that to justify not helping you or giving you what you need?

Oh, well Michael Phelps and Simone Biles can do it - why can’t you?

This is a given.

If the last digit is divisible by 2 (a.k.a. even), then so is the whole number.

If the sum of the digits is divisible by 3, then so is the whole number. The recursivity of this means that if the sum has multiple digits, you can add them up again until you get a single digit and see if it's 3, 6, or 9.

Like the rule for 2, but check if the last two digits are divisible by 4.

If it ends in 5 or 0.

If the rules for both 2 and 3 apply.

No shortcut. Alas.

Like the rules for 2 and 4, but check if the last three digits are divisible by 8. (Yes, this pattern keeps going for 16, 32, etc.)

Like the rule for 3, but the sum of the digits (or the sum of the sum of the digits, etc.) must be 9.

For example, 294

29 4

4×2=8

29-8=21

21 is divisible by 7

Second example, 1946

194 6

6×2=12

194-12=182

182 is still large, so let do it again

18 2

2×2=4

18-4=14

You can't change anything with your actions so don't bother. You going vegetarian won't shut down a factory farm so don't bother. You buying something in sustainable packaging won't make a dent in the landfill so don't bother. You donating five bucks to a charity won't solve poverty so don't bother. You buying ethically-made clothing won't stop sweatshops from operating so don't bother.

I agree that the only way these problems are going to get solved is if the government enacts regulations to do so, but the key point here is that the government is not going to spontaneously do that. Everybody says they want to protect the environment and for people to make a living wage in the abstract but as soon as regulations start being passed people start throwing fits about how it's impacting their lives.

If the government banned factory farms, meat would suddenly be priced like a luxury item and people would throw fits about how poor people can't afford protein anymore, if they banned plastic packaging people would throw fits about how we're expected to bear the increased production costs, if they banned imports of items made in sweatshops or by slave labor people would throw fits about how they can't get their coffee and chocolate and electronics anymore.

There's a post on here about how community river clean-ups don't actually make much of an impact on water pollution, because the major cause of water pollution isn't random trash but industrial and agricultural run-off. But the clean-ups are still extremely valuable because they get the community invested in the cause of water pollution, the community starts taking pride in their local environment and start actually caring about environmental regulations on a personal level, and that grants activists the buy-in to push for changes that actually can reduce water pollution.

We absolutely must get individual buy-in before we can expect systemic change. You can't solve systemic problems with individual action, but you can't solve them without it either. Making small changes to your consumption habits isn't going to fix the world, but it gets people invested in and connected to the cause, it makes them feel like they're part of a larger movement, and it primes them to think of these regulations as wins for that movement rather than a sacrifice being forced upon them by the government.

Yessssss that drives me insane!!

Companies do things because they are profitable. Things are profitable because people buy them. If people stop buying things, they are no longer profitable, and the corporation stops.

Now, obviously I don't think "wait until everyone realizes their rampant consumerism is harmful and spontaneously stops it" is realistic. Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and I think government regulations and restrictions are the way to go here.

BUT, if you support those government regulations, you need to understand that they're going to be extremely unpopular because *people like buying stupid plastic shit made by exploiting people and destroying the planet*. And so, the ground-level fight is still important. We need to be convincing people that buying from these horrible corporations IS, in fact, supporting their behavior even if you have a really good excuse! We need to be cultivating an actual anti-consumerist movement so we can gain the support we need to pass these laws!

Your argument hinges on a few different assumptions:

• Consuming a product is a voluntary or even frivolous action.

• The consumer has at least 1 good option to choose from.

• The average worker has a high enough budget to make these choices as often as they're available.

• Average people are the overconsumers, and these overconsumers are making worse decisions simply because they want to or don't care.

• Turning down any given bad product makes enough of a dent in a corporation's profits to overshadow the lower cost of production for bad products.

• Corporations are inherently in (fair) competition with each other, especially when it comes to environmental friendliness.

• Marketing strategies like green-washing are easy for the average consumer to notice and understand.

• Making high quality products is a good business decision.

In reality, these assumptions simply are not true, and that's a really scary thing to face! But it's important that we do face it.

In reality, a lot of products are necessities, like food, clothes, cleaning agents, tools, etc. and unless you operate on a high budget in an area where reducing packaging waste has already become comercially viable, your options are basically Bad and Worse, instead of Good or Bad. Corporations take advantage of this in a few different ways!

• Low wages: a worker who does not earn enough money to make consistently environmentally friendly choices is going to choose a product that is cheaper to produce, meaning easier to profit from while still having a lower price on the shelf.

• Competing in price range instead of green range: dumping prices for your already cheap product lower than what weaker competitors can match, because they can't take the dent in their profits, and then you have closer to a monopoly and better brand recognition.

• Doing marginally less bad than a competitor and using green-washing: a lot of your time your options for a necessary product is going to be 100% plastic, or something like a plastic-paper blend or 5% recycled plastic (95% non-recycled plastic), meaning that you don't actually have a plastic free choice, and as long as they can get away with this kind of stand-still illusion of choice, they will do that. There is less profit in innovation than it is to choose between marketing to poor people vs. niche middle class vaguely environmentally concious people. Corporations will often not choose one or the other, but will instead make a product that is still shitty while marketing it as environmentally concious, which is called green-washing.

• In a lot of cases, regardless of whether you buy a product or not, it ends up in a landfill. You have probably heard about the scandal of fast fashion dumping waste in South America, so I will not get too into it.

Now you may wonder, what about the overconsumers?

We can't truly address overconsumers as a whole, because there are several different kinds that are created by their circumstances, but let's look at some of them:

• The Upper Class: these are people like Taylor "Pollution Queen" Swift using private jets all the time, as well as Rich Kid Joe going on one of his five yachts to pour champagne down the drain to celebrate his golf win. You cannot appeal to these people about their individual responsibility because they tend to view their ability to shirk responsibility as appealing or even worthy of striving for. Class is a big player in environmental discussions.

• The (Shrinking) Middle Class: This is where choices actually can both become available and be appealing, but it's also where factors like marketing, dark patterns, mental unwellness, etc. are most effective at turning people into casual overconsumers, because they have the money to overconsume consistently while also having the comfort of being able to participate in use-and-discard culture while also typically being the least affected by the consequences (after the upper class of course).

• The (Growing) Under Class: people who don't have a comfortable amount of money often end up in situations where they don't have choices, at the same time as they're also tergeted by marketing who knows their priority is staying afloat for the month/week/day.

For one, we can't expect the middle class to pull through while we have a system that is making the average person poorer and poorer in comparison to the upper class. Upper classes and corporations have a real material interest in turning more people into cheap labour that is stuck having to overconsume, because they're stuck buying cheaper products that don't last.

This brings us into the business strategy of creating worse products on purpose. It's very simple math: If you produce 1 washing machine that lasts 10 years, you have sold 1 washing machine in 10 years. If you produce 10 washing machines that last for 1 year each, you have sold 10 washing machines in 10 years. If your ultimate goal is profit, then you're going to do the second strategy. If you're competing with other businesses who know that this is how math works, you're going to try to buy each other up, use price lowering tactics, and try to stay in a very similar range of quality where the one who is "twice as good" as you lasts for 2 years, because that looks 200% better while still being a lot more low-effort/low-cost than a good quality product, and will still make sure the consumer comes back soon to buy a new product.

Middle class people can often buy the "200% better" product and feel good about their decision, while lower class people are often forced to go with the worst products because they can't afford "200% better", meaning they have to replace it sooner, costing them more money in the long run for the price of staying afloat in the short run, while the companies are reaping the real reward. This applies to everything. This applies to underwear of all things, which I have personally experienced when I needed to buy underwear cheaply but they broke within months, meanwhile other more expensive underwear I've bought has lasted years. My mom's old underwear that was made with higher quality has lasted decades.

We've already talked about green washing, but there is other predatory marketing. In my deranged opinion, all marketing is predatory, but there absolutely is a scale. Companies like Temu, Shien and Amazon will lure in average consumers with prices that are lower than the cost of production while using underpaid labour and promising deliveries that are so fast that their workers' health is compromised, but they also try to hide this from you and slither out of all legal loopholes they can find. Online shops and tbh even physical stores imo will use "dark patterns" to stress consumers into making fast, poorly thought through decisions, to make things look discounted when they're not, to make things look like they're an inoffensive safe option by making legal disclaimers very very tiny and hard to find and read, blaming manufacturers for undisclosed risks instead of bearing the responsibility as a marketplace, rewards for spending more and consuming more advertisements. They are designed to take advantage of people, especially those who will overspend which is common for people with low impulse control (adhd, bipolar, bpd, and other mental health conditions can make people especially vulnerable to this strategy, but also just loneliness and dissatisfaction tbh). You know how pay-to-win games target middle class middle age women to be "whales"? Stores do that kind of thing, too, to see who they can turn into a recurring overconsumer.

There is also the problem that a lot of the time low quality plastic knickknacks are actually a lot more affordable than necessities, fun experiences, and even sometimes existing in public. Oh, you want to use a bathroom? You have to buy something at the store. No loitering! Pay to be here! You can't afford to go to a concert with your friends but you can afford shitty earbuds from amazon that will break in 2 months. You can go shopping with your friends, because looking at clothes is free and it's one of few activities where you live, but if you don't want to stand out you should buy something and it will be cheap polyester and fall apart before summer is over.

Not to talk about food deserts.

If we genuinely want to help people not be preyed on by companies we need to put the responsibility on the companies and our governments to get rid of the traps.

We also need to create laws that make it so turning down a product actually has any effect. For example, look at Nestle. Everyone I know either hate Nastle with a passion or don't know anything about Nestle, and yet, even people who make an active effort to boycott the company are not able to because they just own so many brands and don't disclose clearly that they're a Nestle brand, so to actually be able to make an informed decision people have to make a ridiculous amount of research on every brand they come across and memorize it, which, is just not feasible for the vast majority of people.

A lot of companies do this thing where instead of making environmentally friendly decisions over all, they make 1 product line that caters to people who value price, and 1 product line that caters to people who value the environment, so that they can have a wider consumer base. The shitty product could be as popular as ever, they just tapped into a different market as well, gaining more customers who think they're making a decision when really they're just additional profits.

"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" doesn't mean fuck it let's stop trying, it means that we have to actually come together to target the corporations and the system that favours them

There are some things the government can do that will probably have some broad support, primarily enforcing antitrust laws and breaking up monopolies. However, most people *fucking hate* government regulation and the second those regulations start to interfere with their lives in any way they will turn on them in a second. Can the government ban Temu and Shein in the name of environmental protection? Can they shut down the fast fashion and animal agriculture industries that are destroying the planet and filling our oceans with waste? Can they ban the import of any product not made by someone making a living wage? Not without losing power for the next fifty years, they can't. The only way they could possibly pass those laws is with popular support, and the only way we're getting popular support for that is if people start understanding that their lifestyle is directly contributing to all the problems they complain so much about.

And I do not have a lot of sympathy for people claiming that being poor or overworked should exempt you from having to make ethical decisions. Americans, even poor Americans, have a comparatively high quality of life that is underwritten by the exploitation and suffering of the global south. If you as a leftist proclaim to care about that exploitation, you need to prioritize it over Americans maybe having to buy slightly more expensive fair trade coffee or chocolate.

I understand that people who are poor and overworked are not often going to be thinking about the impact of their actions on sweatshop workers in China. I understand that some people genuinely have no choice in what they buy. I understand that the options are often between "bad" and "worse. I understand that nobody can live a perfectly ethical life or research every single company they buy from. But let's not exalt ignorance and apathy here, either. There ARE things people can do to make a small difference. There IS a way to make more ethical choices. And yes! It will involve some sacrifice! But you absolutely cannot harp on how evil and exploitative Amazon is and then still have a Prime account because you like two-day shipping.

i feel like the problem with this question is best illustrated by a conversation i had with a friend a while back, where i said something like, "i feel very safe with you because you don't do subtle hints and you are always very straight-up with me about what you are thinking and feeling."

If you care about Animal Cruelty in Factory Farms, you need to get legislation passed. It must become a crime to mistreat animals in those ways, and when malfeasances occurs, the onus of responsibility for those crimes must fall upon wealthy shoulders. That, also, requires legislation. It requires regulations, and regulators.

The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.

Why would anyone choose to do inbetweens on someone else's cartoon, when they have no financial or occupational obstacles to just working on their OWN cartoon? Animation takes dozens or hundreds of people to do to current quality and a lot of it is a really shit job to get stuck with.

The same goes for things like toys and collectables. Who is going to CHOOSE to make someone else's dolls all day when anyone with the skill or the talent is 100% fo the kind of person who would just be making their OWN dolls in miniscule batches.

Remove employment from the equation and I just don't see any reason why ANYONE would do large entertainment projects at current scale. And even if they did, most of them would crumble under the fact that the entire workforce can and will just leave at any possible moment, right?

People wanting to trade and barter and earn luxuries is not Capitalism, it's just... well, trade, I'm pretty sure.

Capitalism specifically is when people can own Capital--that is, they can own something like Land, or a machine, or a factory, or the copyright to a book, ect, and then they can rent that object out to someone else in order to make a profit.

As a very simplified example, someone spends, say, 10k to buy a shoe-making machine. Then they buy shoe materials for $2 each, pay someone to use the machine and actually make the shoes for $4 per shoe, and then sell the shoes for $20 each, making a $14 profit without actually doing any work. They'll need to sell 715 shoes in order to make a profit, but since they don't actually need to do anything other than own the machine and hire people to work it, that doesn't really matter that much.