Posts by gpilz@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AnMlIyIZcLHS5Q42u8 by gpilz@mastodon.social
2024-10-25T13:28:51Z
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@aral - capitalism is the antithesis of democracy. What good does it to do to have political democracy when you must kowtow to an completely authoritarian institution in order to have food, housing, etc.? A simple, trivial, example: You can vote to legalize marijuana but you can't enjoy it in the comfort and safety of your own home when you have to pass a piss test on Monday.
(DIR) Post #AnygiBe1V8CVziHeOu by gpilz@mastodon.social
2024-11-12T20:36:27Z
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@aral One thing that is truly distressing is the percentage of the population that is incapable of even imagining the possibility questioning the idea of capitalism. They regard it as a given, like gravity.
(DIR) Post #AoReicIX85LvbwduEq by gpilz@mastodon.social
2024-11-26T20:00:45Z
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@aral If it was as shitty as it ended up being from the get-go, it would have never attracted a user base large enough to warrant all the extractive tricks that eventually made it so shitty. The transitive nature of "enshittify" connotes the essential bait-and-switch nature of building something that people like then fucking it up as you attempt to extract every last cent of value out of that ecosystem.
(DIR) Post #AoluRV2mM8XZ9Aaki0 by gpilz@mastodon.social
2024-12-06T14:31:36Z
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@futurebird The urge to proclaim your self-sufficiency is rooted in a desire to escape the moral obligations of inter-dependency. I actually find hope in this because it indicates that these people understand, perhaps some level that may not intrude on their consciousness, that we are all morally responsible for one another's welfare. This make them far better than the sociopaths who understand that we are inter-dependent but don't feel any sense of moral obligation to their fellow humans.
(DIR) Post #AqJkp2o5CoKfPk3aZE by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-01-21T20:09:31Z
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@ActionRetro Is it running OS/2 Warp? If not then ... nope.
(DIR) Post #AqoTzk0Wyc2XbCX1do by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-02-05T16:03:35Z
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@futurebird "Nothing about this process requires us to be rude or uncivil with one another."
(DIR) Post #Aqwo6ceo1DhQwWgWno by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-02-09T16:26:33Z
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@futurebird @sloanlance I've tried this line of reasoning with transphobes but they tend to use their oversimplified understanding of genetic gender ("XY" means male, "XX" means female) to argue that "that isn't a good analogy". Of course, they cling to this oversimplification because it provides them with a justification for their transphobia.
(DIR) Post #ArDSi5NVIpsbQhMybQ by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-02-17T17:16:58Z
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@futurebird @trainguyrom At the very least they are yet another example of hierarchically classifying things by degree of constraint. A rectangle is kind of a parallelogram that is further constrained by the angles of its vertices (all 90 degrees). A square is a rectangle that is further constrained by the length of its sides, etc. All rectangles are parallelograms but not all parallelograms are rectangles.
(DIR) Post #ArLN8KiXqgpw4Z1VSK by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-02-21T12:52:11Z
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@stux Their cringey buffoonery is disarming. We are culturally programmed to expect authoritarians to be stern, serious, and well dressed. We don't recognize the naked exercise of unchecked power when its carried out by clowns.
(DIR) Post #AraKR4WwJj60NCoz7A by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-02-28T18:01:30Z
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@aral In contrast, look at what happened to Red Lobster. Ostensibly they were underutilizing valuable property by not generating all the profit that you could/should from that property. So the private equity system cannibalizes them and, eventually, some other businesses end up with that property, but I haven't found any evidence or even a claim that the businesses that are now occupying ex-Red Lobsters are any more profitable than Red Lobster.
(DIR) Post #ArvM13WZiMKZx6X15E by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-03-10T21:29:05Z
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@stux The American people elected Trump. They deserve to feel all the pain that that decision creates. If you don't feel the pain of your dumb decisions, how will you ever learn?
(DIR) Post #AsDYdf49HSP1gVgmH2 by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-03-19T16:15:30Z
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@futurebird It's weird that no group of investment bankers has appeared to buy them up, sell off their real estate, and force them to rent it back.
(DIR) Post #AtISNU1yRxvorvkjuy by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-04-20T22:50:58Z
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@futurebird If you had a child in 3rd grade that made something that looked like this, it would strain your parental acting ability to convince them that you really thought it was "beautiful".
(DIR) Post #AtPmYdGToi9fsmqp7Y by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-04-24T11:40:05Z
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@futurebird Somewhere the soul of Herr Doktor Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is quietly weeping.
(DIR) Post #AtU7dx78jQmiVi5zUG by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-04-26T12:36:05Z
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@HeavenlyPossum The elite have always rationalized their power and wealth using whatever cultural tropes were available. It was just "the natural order of things" according to "God's plan". How could you question God's plan? Then it was "the natural order of things" according "the science of evolution". How could you argue with "science"? What is interesting is the weird side-effects of these rationalizations.
(DIR) Post #Aucb9Nxw9msFVUlnGK by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-05-30T13:55:36Z
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@futurebird I have added "A Door Into Ocean" to my list of books to read. Thank you.
(DIR) Post #AwMMYDFkP4BoAvA4jA by gpilz@mastodon.social
2025-07-21T13:40:49Z
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@futurebird @dangillmor The *most* *charitable* interpretation of armed, masked men who arrest people while refusing to identify themselves is that they are, by definition, the Secret Police. Every other interpretation is worse than that.I don't want to live in a country that has Secret Police.