• 5 Posts
  • 176 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • All the time. If it’s a company I dislike and I see them advertising on Google, I know I’m costing them money. Google uses an auction house system for ads, so common words can have a lot of competition. You could be making that company pay a dollar or more for that click, and at the same time contribute to a headache for their marketers who are keeping a close eye on their cost per click and customer acquisition costs.

    Yeah, google wins in this scenario too, but there’s not much I can do about that.






  • Maybe enough to make a huge difference. To be clear, I have zero problem with the concept of wealth redistribution to better achieve some kind of equitable outcome (that ideally isn’t at the cost of the environment, which is the big reason that the top global richest will need to give up a lot of travel ).

    I just think a lot of the people who are keen for “eat the rich”, especially in its more violent forms, may not realise they’re on the menu themselves when the issue is looked at from a global all-of-humanity perspective. And, I encourage people to really think about who and what is included or excluded in the definitions of “rich”, what level of variation is acceptable to them, and what a sustainable living situation even looks like for the world’s population if we had total equality. They’re all very hard questions that I don’t have an answer to either.


  • To an extent, it’s completely understandable. To have a significant proportion of the richest people in the world struggle to pay all their bills or afford medical care is a really hard concept to reconcile. And if you’re someone who has never been exposed to a sizable group of people who don’t have a reliable source of clean water or the most basic of staple foods, it’s very easy to not realise how privileged you might be - even if you’re really genuinely struggling compared to everyone around you.

    To me it highlights that the problem is much deeper than wealth inequality, even though that’s a huge symptom. But that’s another topic altogether.

    Thanks for understanding where I was coming from though!





  • How is it victim blaming to try to define the scope? Most of the demographic who visit lemmy wouldn’t consider fast food workers to be rich, and I certainly don’t, but by income they are literally at the halfway point globally. To the billions of people who are below even the 25th percentile, they may well consider a US fast food worker rich. The extreme poverty that exists in this world is a very well hidden atrocity, but the perspectives of those people still matter to me and still should be taken into account.


  • It’s a meme designed to express dissatisfaction with income equality and the desire to fix it. What isn’t clear to me is what qualifies as “rich”. Because a US based entry-level fast food worker is at the 50th percentile of richest people in the world by income, after accounting for cost of living and other regional inequality.

    It’s also pretty clear from studies that everyone in the top 30% of the richest in the world will need to give up a lot of our privileges if we’re going to address climate change, and I don’t think people realise how rich they actually are. https://wid.world/income-comparator/ uses some of the latest research to help you find out, it’s definitely worth a look.


  • The world’s population is getting significantly sicker and we’re blaming the victims for “lifestyle diseases” as a way of dismissing the problem. But research needs money and time, so there will always be better and stronger evidence for money-making remedies instead of the slow and complex research into why people are increasingly experiencing disease.

    We’re hurting ourselves, and each other, and because disabled people are excluded from huge parts of society, we’re also covering up the evidence. It’s only when we’re wounded that the reality is clear, but by then it’s too late - you’re just written off as someone who made bad choices.





  • My rule is that if you intend to touch the butter/spread/sticky stuff with a utensil, that utensil cannot touch the bread. You just drop the portion on the bread from a height until you think there’s enough to cover it, and then you can spread it with that utensil, but if you need to revisit the jar, you need another fresh utensil.

    You can’t get crumbs in there if there’s no cross contamination from the equipment to begin with!

    You get better at estimating over time, but having one extra piece of cutlery to wash occasionally is less infuriating than unexpected stale crumbs and food that spoils more quickly from the contaminating yeasts and other organisms.


  • It’s very easy to cast ableist accusations at imaginary scenarios.

    Nobody is suggesting the word is erased from the dictionary or existing literature be modified. We’re suggesting that it is more efficient communication to choose words which communicate our intended meaning instead of incorporating unintended additional anachronistic connotations. There are plenty of existing choices that are just as easily understood, we don’t even need to invent new ones.

    It’s the same reason I no longer call cigarettes “fags” - and that actually has a different etymology to the slur, whereas “mankind” is inherently based on the gendered word “man”. It’s just not worth it to have to actively disambiguate the meaning, especially to someone who has some associated memories of being bullied for their sexuality.

    People may not say a word with negative intentions, but when you are excluded for irrelevant historical reasons that imply you’re not worth considering, it’s noticeable. If you think that’s not the case, walk into your next work meeting and greet them only with “Hello, ladies.”

    Intention and perceived intention are conveyed by the words we choose, it makes sense to be intentionally unambiguous.



  • Traditional homonyms reinforce ingrained cultural stereotypes.

    Nobody in the right mind would argue that the word “mankind” means only male part of humanity.

    Perhaps not, but it does support the outdated tradition of considering the male gender to be the “default person”. This has had many lasting negative consequences, in areas ranging from scientific research to product design.


  • That is not a level of power I officially possess, but it is a level of power that I am able to unofficially implement for the people who solely report to me. I am also able to tailor their roles and responsibilities to whatever causes them the least pain because their job titles are extremely non-specific, which is very helpful for both of us.

    Both manager and non-managers are economically coerced into providing our time and energy. I try my best to reduce that burden for as many people as I can without being noticed by the people who are willing to suck the life out of others for personal gain.