EnglishMobster

joined 1 year ago
[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 30 points 1 year ago

People don't want to sell their personal data for currency.

People need currency. There is only a finite amount of currency in the world. Power structures are formed because some people have currency and other people need currency.

People are forced to do things like sell their bodies, sell their organs, and - yes - sell their biometric data. Because they need currency to survive. You don't see billionaires lining up for this.

It's exploitation of those who are most desperate. You can argue that there's the systemic problem - that there shouldn't be billionaires alongside people who are starving and need to sell their bodies - but that isn't being solved anytime soon.

But exploiting this systemic problem, using it as leverage to convince millions of poor folks to sell their biometric data... that's immoral. It's immoral to take advantage of desperation just to line your own pockets.

Why do you think you're hearing about this from some of the poorest countries in the world?

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

You're not incorrect, and even "he was a product of his time" isn't an excuse: when he was alive, even other racists thought that Lovecraft was a bit too racist.

However, at the same time - you have to look at what impact reading his work has.

He's dead. He doesn't get money from it. The works are public domain. His estate doesn't get money from it. Further, the language used is striking, influencing a century of other work.

Does that language come from a place of racism? Yes. But it the work itself isn't overly racist - or at least, it doesn't make it more racist than Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four is used in college classes today to teach Orientalism, yet largely people accept such a thing as okay because it doesn't radicalize new people into the subject.

If you reject every artistic work because the creators had questionable views, then you begin forcing yourself into strange choices. If the artist doesn't gain benefit from you reading it - then logically, it doesn't matter if you read something they made or not (contrast this to Harry Potter, where consuming said media gives money to a TERF). When the artist is out of the picture, the only thing that matters is what the work means to you.

You have the right to say "the work is abhorrent because of XYZ", but said things should be things you can point to within the work itself. If the artist isn't gaining benefit and their views aren't the focus of the work - why does it matter?

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lmao, from

A lot of these are not exactly clear threats. If you used the same standards I’m sure you could come up with a similar list from the US.

to

Generating such a biased, exaggerated list for the US would be a waste of time

Aka "I'm having trouble sourcing my own claim so just trust me bro"

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There's a great video about this sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs

Essentially, it looks at why conservatives vs. liberals approach the world differently. Democracy vs. capitalism is inherently a logical contradiction; in a true democracy, everyone is treated equally and all voices have equal weights. In capitalism, some people are more equal than others - it's a pyramid. Fascism is when these "some people are better" is because of something like genetics, or culture. (The video doesn't touch on this, but modern Communism falls into the same trap as well, where "some people are better" because they know the party leaders or they're technocrats. It's a mindset that humans have and not something exclusive to capitalism.)

Where you wind up on the American political spectrum is based on where you fall when the ideals of equality vs. hierarchy clash. There is no middle ground because the two are fundamentally incompatible - if everyone was truly treated equally, you couldn't have people with more power/status than others. If you accept that not everyone should wield power and that at the end of the day there must be some rich and some poor - some that have power and others that do not - then you are therefore arguing that people shouldn't be treated equally. From there, the pyramid structure is the natural order of things ("always a bigger fish").

Because the structure is fundamentally at odds with itself you can't have both at once. You have to compromise on one side more than the other. Hence there is no such thing as "apolitical", even with technology - it will hold a bias one way or the other.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 74 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They've invested a lot of money in office real estate and hate that it's going to waste.

Also, CEOs tend to be extroverts who want to be around people. They're also sociopaths who think everyone is like them (or they don't care what others think).

Combine the two and you get this.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Yes, and if you wind up moving to a console (once console versions come out) it will support those saves on console as well - if the launcher is to be believed.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Neon FTW. Been my daily driver for a while now with zero problems.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Tankies have really been doubling down the last few days. I hate that this place is infested with them - and it seems to be growing as they start to scare sane people away.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Shouting out Bookwyrm. It's a fediverse version of Goodreads. You can even import your Goodreads shelves into it.

It interops with Mastodon and Kbin.

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