Obinice

That assumes you live in one of a small number of countries for which politics significantly shifted after one of those countries was attacked.

And also that you’re at least old enough to have had a reasonable mature understanding of the political landscape before 2001, so as to appreciate how things changed. Let’s assume that’d make you at least 20.

…So, we have to be at least 43 years old, and American, or you’ll assume we’re children?

That’s very illegal in the UK and EU, oh my.

But if labour can afford to live, how will we minimise their ability to focus what little energy we leave them with at the end of their shift on improving their situation?

Paying a living wage is a slippery slope that ends in things like healthcare, education and opportunities being available to all, and that’d make them more than just our bought and paid for production labour, that’d make them our rivals.

I don’t think people are “refusing”, it’s not like it’s mandatory or anything. Nobody’s trying to force you to drive a car.

I know I’ll never be able to afford a car, they’re incredibly expensive to buy and operate, and most of my travel is already covered by our excellent Trams, Buses and Trains, which can get me basically anywhere comfortably and quickly.

For the times I need something special I can ask someone for a lift, but that happens only a handful of times a year. A car would be a big, expensive, risky piece of equipment to just leave sat around for someone to steal…

I’m not focusing on the things that don’t affect me in some way, and I’m still miserable.

I agree that staying informed is extremely depressing. But what would you have me do, stick my head in the sand and ignore what my government it’s doing? Ignore the growing control and power the rich capitalist ruling class have over us all year by year? Or ignore what the growing fascist powers within my nation and other important places like the USA are doing? Or how the global climate for humans is collapsing and what’s causing it?

Most of these things directly impact me right now, and will continue to have an even greater impact as time goes on.

I’m not focusing on news stories that have no impact on me. I don’t care what Elon Musk had for breakfast, what the latest hot celebrity is doing, or what the Royal family is up to. Even so, only focusing on what affects me and my family is a huge, deeply depressing weight that is ever growing.

I agree, it’s awful. But the world, for all the beauty it also contains, is growing ever more awful day by day. I just can’t find it in me to bury my head in the sand and hope it’ll all turn out fine, so instead I stay informed and stay miserable :-(

We can’t fight back if we don’t understand our enemy and what they’re doing to us. We can’t make informed decisions about who to vote for, for example, if we don’t follow those political parties and politicians track records, their history of decisions and statements and so on.

People who ignore the day to day stuff and then show up to do 10 minutes of bullet point blurb research to figure out who to vote for are not likely to gain a clear understanding of the parties or candidates true beliefs and intentions. The same is true for companies, we need to stay informed on what they say, what they actually do, so we can be informed on whether we want to work for them, or use their products and services, etc etc.

We must stay informed. They want us uninformed so they can manipulate us with ease. Ignorance is bliss, but at what price?

Anyway, it’s a quandary, and a sad one, I agree for sure 🫂

It’s worth noting that you’re looking at conservatives from a USA perspective, which is valid and very informative, it’s just that OP didn’t specify a country, so it might also be worth discussing conservative vs liberal culture in places like Europe too, or perhaps prefacing your wonderfully detailed response with something to clarify that when you’re talking about conservatives, you mean a very specific subset of them (as opposed to, say, the conservatives of the UK, where their political party is itself called the Conservative Party).

Rock on! :-D

Being sacked isn’t ruining someone’s life. There are other companies, other jobs. It’s hardly the end of the world.

What you’re saying is “I want him to know it’s okay to keep doing this to other people with no consequences”.

SMS are completely free? I mean yeah, they cost money back in 2009, but that was a loooooong time ago.

Wherever you are, you’re being completely screwed, yeah.

No no like, that classic golden oldies singer, Britney Spears!

NIt’s election season on the internet

Is it? Or is it just election season in a couple of specific countries, and not elsewhere…

Just sayin :P

I have slippers for when I want to cook in the kitchen or nip outside for a minute, etc. Other than that, I just wear my socks indoors.

Also of course, don’t wear dirty shoes past the entryway of the house. If they’re not dirty that’s another story, but if they are, off they come.

DokuWiki is fantastic!

If you’re in the UK, any targeted throttling of your connection is considered traffic shaping and is illegal pretty much always.

Your ISP is required to publish documentation on all traffic throttling that they employ, even if it’s none. Check out their documentation and see what it says, if you’re in the UK.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide has been comforting me since I first discovered it in a charity shop at the age of 12.

People are truly strange, it’s not just you, and the universe is more than we know. I found that comforting, and Adams’ humour opened a whole new world to me :-)

I just want to tell you both good luck.

We’re all counting on you.

“the government” - doesn’t bother to mention which government xD

I’m guessing you’re from Finland, right?

Take your time, stability and uptime is most important. Thank you :-)

I considered buying it, I tried it out on Gamepass first, and alas it crashed 5 times with illegal memory access errors before I could even get past character creation haha.

I’m looking forward to trying out the game, I just can’t afford to buy the full thing at the moment, and will have to wait until they’ve patched out the more serious bugs.

Which is fine of course! I’ll just wait 6 months or so, and come back to it then ^_ If I’d paid money for it I’d have been upset, but as it stands I’m good.

What’s that about only getting 720p though? My TV shows the 4K HDR stuff great from places like Netflix or Prime, has done for years now, and my TV isn’t even new. Surely all modern stuff will show all that high definition stuff just fine.

I think my browser does too, though I only have a 2K screen as of recently on my PC, but I’m certain it’s not playing video in 720p for sure. It’s at least 1080p if not more.

But yeah, these services aren’t giving enough bang for their pound these days, it’s reaching insulting levels, it’s unsurprising people are forced into piracy.

The consumer (or if you prefer, the market) decides what someone is worth, and if it’s being sold for above market value… people won’t buy. Simple as that.

We’ve shown we’re happy to pay a reasonable amount of money for these services, and yet they insist on squeezing exorbitant amounts of money out of us for less and less value. Madness.

Sadly I believe you’re right.

The other side of the coin is desperation, too. Let’s say there’s a truly serious pandemic. Huge numbers of people getting sick, not enough resources to treat them all, even if there is a treatment.

In that scenario, even in a world with no antivaxers or antimaskers, where everyone trusts the science and the doctors, do we think everyone is going to just stay in their homes following the quarantine rules, when there’s not enough to go around, and doing so could be a death sentence?

Or do we think they’d go out, and try to get their hands on what they need to survive? Be it food, medicines etc…

Even in a world of people who trust the science like you or I, we’re probably screwed if things really get that bad, and the only reason COVID didn’t get that bad is for all its awfulness, it’s actually a relatively mild illness overall (not to disrespect the many deaths it caused, just to say that as things go, it could have easily been more infectious, more deadly, harder to treat, etc).

When things get that bad, good people will be so desperate to save themselves, their families, their children, that they’ll break the rules, spread the disease, and doom us all :-(