PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]

Anarchist, autistic, engineer, and Certified Professional Life-Regretter. If you got a brick of text, don’t be alarmed; that’s normal.

No, I’m not interested in voting for your candidate.

  • 2 Posts
  • 232 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • They created a good product so people used it and there were no alternatives when it got shit.

    They created an inherently centralizing implementation of a video sharing platform. Even if it was done with good intentions (which it wasn’t, it was some capitalist’s hustle, and its social importance is a side effect), we should basically always condemn centralizing implementations of a given technology because they reinforce existing power structures regardless of the intentions of their creators.

    It’s their fault because they’re a corporation that does what corporations do. Even when corporations try to do right by the world (which is an extremely generous appraisal of YouTube’s existence), they still manage to create centralizing technologies that ultimately serve to reinforce their existing power, because that’s all they can do. Otherwise, they would have set themselves up as a non-profit or some other type of organization. I refuse to accept the notion of a good corporation.

    There’s no lock in. They don’t force you off the platform if you post elsewhere (like twitch did).

    That’s a good point, but while there isn’t a de jure lock-in for creators, there is a de facto lock-in that prevents them from migrating elsewhere. Namely, that YouTube is a centralized, proprietary service, which can’t be accessed from other services.






  • Not really? Although I’m probably way more tolerant to (wideband!) noise than others because I sleep literally inches from two box fans.

    But you don’t need to run it while you’re sleeping. It goes from room temperature to ice in under 10 minutes (20 minutes for the “good” ice after the insides have had a bit of time to cool down).


    To be clear, what I have is a Frigidaire portable ice maker. Here’s its Walmart product page, although I can’t vouch for Walmart’s website respecting your privacy.

    I actually bought a knockoff of this a couple years ago off Amazon, and it worked for about a year, but:

    1. The infrared sensor was crap from day 1, so I always had to manually override the machine’s decision that the ice was full, even when it was completely empty.
    2. The water where I was living (dorm room in city) was much…harder I think? It was safe to drink, I even tested it myself, but whatever minerals were in it very quickly fucked up my machine’s internals. I’m living at my parents house with better water.

    So far, the Frigidaire is a much better unit, and I use it tremendously more often because I don’t have to babysit the thing and constantly override the infrared sensor.

    The water supply is just an ordinary tank. Basically just open the lid, dump a Super Big Gulp of water into the tank every few hours and you’re set. Everything is self contained.

    It doesn’t keep the ice cool for you, i.e. it’s not a freezer. Once the ice gets dumped in the bucket, you’re on your own.

    So if you go down this route, I recommend getting a decent version of it. Mine cost about $87 in store from Walmart but I really bought this unit as an impulse buy, so I imagine you can get it cheaper if you do some shopping.











    1. The entire sentence, with different emphasis, is:

    It’s not literally everyone, it’s people with power and influence who use their energy to prop up the Democratic machine.

    So clearly I’m not irritated at literally all people with power of any form.

    Keep in mind, in this thread I am charitably replying to the dishonest suggestion that the average taxpayer has just as much culpability in the genocide in Gaza as someone who goes deep into the halls of power and participates in their process as a delegate.

    The power and influence to which my previous comment alluded is that which these delegates fought hard to get, and are now using to prop up the war machine. Again, there is a huge difference in culpability between DNC delegates and the average liberal that’s just trying to get back.

    Clearly that kind of nuance cannot be indicated by the meme that started this whole thread, as memes intentionally trade substance for brevity, but my other comments throughout the thread have sufficiently explained that my position is a lot more nuanced than “haha all Democrats all bad”.

    1. The power and influence I have is basically entirely privilege that I didn’t choose to get and can’t fully reject even though I try my damnedest. I literally don’t even have a job, can’t find one if I tried, no influence on social media other than what you’re reading now, and look what good that’s doing.

    Basically the only real power I took for myself in my entire adult life is my education, on which I defer to Bakunin:

    Does it follow that I drive back every authority? The thought would never occur to me. When it is a question of boots, I refer the matter to the authority of the cobbler; when it is a question of houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For each special area of knowledge I speak to the appropriate expert. But I allow neither the cobbler nor the architect nor the scientist to impose upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and verification.

    I.e. I don’t think that all the power afforded to me by my education is unjust. I am most certainly not using the little power I have to prop up the war machine. (Much to my personal detriment! My line of work is extremely useful to the war machine.) That power which is unjust I take very seriously to reject as best as I can.

    Again, it is a ludicrous suggestion that a poor grad student posting memes dunking on the misfortunes of people in power has a comparable power and influence to a delegate at the Democratic National Convention.