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I'm probably just going to give up on buying a car
  • yeah... I drove cheap worthless cars and have a clean driving record and insurance was still like $700/yr for liability only. In some states you can sorta get away with not having insurance for a little while but its a mess if you get caught. plus idk, $100 registration? cheapest to operate was probably just oil changes and gas but eventually other maintenance will always be needed (tires brakes bulbs, other fluids).

    No car is ever cheap really, theres a reason the average cost of ownership is like $6k a year min

  • AMAB? The USPS has something called iCOP - the Internet Covert Operations Program.
  • I knew a guy that worked at UPS and he said they didnt pull stuff and give it to law enforcement unless it like, broke open and was visibly drugs, or stank of weed bad enough they couldnt pretend not to smell it. But there might be programs at a higher level for cooperation, idk, and I'm sure they cooperate with requests/warrants

  • I realized that I haven't listened to any albums from 2024 yet so I downloaded a bunch, this is my playlist for today, it'll be my first time hearing each album, what am i in for?
  • I won't shit on your taste except to note that I completely dont understand why so many people like taylor swift... but I'd have high hopes for the khruangbin, I've been hearing some on the radio and liking it, and theres at least some very catchy tracks from vampire weekend, if not amazing IMO, but I haven't listened to the album through or anything.

  • Some Zionist TikTokers made Miss Rachel cry and people are freaking out
  • She did a fundraiser for Palestine and they told her it was too little too late and that she didn’t give a shit about Palestinian children.

    A kids content creator using their platform to fundraise for a worthy cause that is (though wrongly,) seen as highly controversial and political is great. Its not revolutionary, but its productive and its normalizing in a way that politics-focused people speaking out is not. Why the hell was she being harassed?

  • Am I wrong though?
  • yeah but if you do some googling, it seems they actually did add such isolation in the past couple years. Though from what I read, the isolation still isnt as good as chromium's, its not fair to say they don't have it

  • Am I wrong though?
  • what security issues? genuinely curious, I no longer use it but havent heard anything particularly out of ordinary

    I know it used to have a certain reputation/one specific issue but that's been fixed for years

  • Who fixes toilets under communism?
  • I don't love love plumbing but I'll do it 30 hrs a week if it needs doing and I dont have to worry about my basic needs not getting met (especially when I get too old or injured to keep plumbing)

    most shitty jobs aren't that shitty if you take away the profit motive and treat people with a little dignity.

  • The heads of the USDA and CDC, along with every ranch owner need to be executed for public safety.
  • unpasteurized milk is also a risk and theres definitely people drinking that. its not well adapted to human spread yet but letting it spread unchecked through the US's like 40 million cows and potentially other animals too, is a great way for it to acquire the mutations necessary to get a foothold in humans and start killing.

    and its influenza... we already know it has that potential

  • Does Hank Green have a humiliation fetish?

    Seriously, he manages to spend this entire video pointing out his own obvious mistakes, or saying in the edit how he'll correct them later, but then has to put a correction in the comments about how he drastically underestimated prices that he didn't bother to check, so the final "maybe correct" results aren't even reflected in the video at all. And then he completely speculates on how they might price things and completely neglects the possibility that the pricing at two different restaurants might have anything to do with eachother.

    Why even make this? I guess the point about "premium" fast food places selling you bigger portions

    6
    Lib Green thinks Biden is Doing His Best

    your weekly dose of hankschannel libshit. the description is pure "the president couldn't possibly have lied or made a mistake" copium

    HOW IS HIS TAKEAWAY FROM ALL THIS THAT TWITTER IS BAD BUT BIDEN IS GOOD

    61
    I changed my mind: I'm now on board for Ibis! (wikipedia rant post)

    cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2061061

    > I was a little skeptical about Ibis, mainly for practical/technical reasons, not philosophical differences (link). > > But something today really changed my mind as to the necessity of figuring out those practical/technical hurdles... I discovered that Wikipedia has widely cited associated site "WikiSource" as its only source for the contents of Salvador Allende's final speech before his death, and now that widely referenced page has been deleted from the site, for "Copyright violation", despite the fact that it almost certainly wasn't, and even if it were, no person in their right mind would ever claim it as such. On the wikipedia side, there's been no updates to the many references to that page, and on the WikiSource side, no serious discussion on the implications of just nuking that highly relevant to the public interest speech from their site, and no coordination between the two. > > They cite some Chilean copyright law, copied from the spanish language WikiSource, but then somehow come to the opposite conclusion that the esWS people did! This was a user-submitted english translation too, so they threw out all of that user's work over a speculative claim by some friggin internet janitor and didn't think that might be relevant. And none of this would have ever come up if they didn't try to become their own source, rather than citing independent websites and other sources... So. Fucking. Stupid. > > And this is after they had the EXACT same discussion 10-12 years ago. It was deleted, and then later restored, based on the EXACT same line of chilean law. But someone decided it was time for a revisit a few months back and now all the links to it are dead again. Just in case, idk, the family of salvador allende decides to sue wikipedia? fat fucking chance > > Also to add insult to injury, the first line of their "Copyright Discussions" page is as follows: > > >This page hosts discussions on works that may violate Wikisource's copyright policy. All arguments should be based entirely on U.S. copyright law. > > I get that due to treaties chilean law is probably relevant here but this is all just a wank-off between Um Actually !nerd moderators so it still made me rage a little > > Anyhow thankfully archive.org aren't such dweebs and I can share with you here the contents of the speech: > > > > ::: spoiler Speech: > Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación. > > My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [national police]. > > Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I'm not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for the loyalty of the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. > > They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and the people make history. > > Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges. > > I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the countrywoman who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them. > > Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country. > > The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either. > > Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society. > > Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers! > > These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain. I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason. > > Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973 > ::: > > I know this is far from the worst thing Wikipedia has ever done, but it really got to me, and I feel an organization with its priorities in order would never behave this way. And in a federated system, not only could I use an instance with its priorities in better order, but also other sites would have likely mirrored the content.

    1
    They said the thing!

    Yeah, okay, sure

    Late dotcom bubble ass marketing. I don't even get what they do but I see that they've shoe-horned "AI" into it somehow

    2
    For the lib/fed dipshits trying to do the "leaderless movement gets hijacked by do-nothings" bit with Uncommitted votes

    The campaign isn't leaderless, it was organized in large part by the people at Listen to Michigan, who explicitly say "We hold Biden's margin for victory", and "Biden must earn our vote through a dramatic change in policy." (emphasis mine). You can post as hard as you want about how absolutely servile to the democratic party you are, but most of the people voting uncommitted actually give half a shit about genocide, so don't claim them for yourself.

    Like seriously, get fucked you brain-broken liberals. Biden won't save you, stop trying to undermine the few electoralists that are actually trying to make a difference in a potentially effective way.

    1
    ahhhhhh wtf I take one.real break all week

    and now someone from this.mutual aid.group I help with wants me to be done with my shit in 4 days not 5, as is the usual max, and they texted a bunch and called, all while my phone was off ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

    3
    Liberals are just fascists who haven't realized it yet (TVLR shitting on Destiny)

    dunk tank for Destiny not for TVLR ofc

    This dude literally thinks sitting in a gamer chair talking arguing with pepes and nazis and shit makes him, and people like him (the good smart liberals), so much more qualified to govern than the dumb doo-doo-heads who take literally any other job. Dude has no fucking clue what an actual day in the life of any worker who does a real job looks like, but he smugly talks down to them with his elementary school understanding of their job anyhow

    I hate liberals and I hate this country jfc

    EDIT: wow thanks hexbear for not showing me the that u/Pluto already posted this everywhere until after my post went live. working as intended

    3
    Dumbphone posting (/intentional technology use manifesto)

    image shamelessly stolen from r/dumbphones and mostly unrelated

    I feel like we could almost use a comm for this specifically but c/technology will do

    Anyone else here have luck with cutting back on smartphone/technology use in general, or feel like they need to try a change in that department? Or even just social media? Chime in below I'd love to chat about it.

    I'm avoiding work rn and thinking about smartphone use. I had an android phone for many years and I think it was a really negative force in my life. Sure there's lots of times it's useful as a one-off but overall I don't think it was actually good to have on me all the time. I think the overarching issue with a lot of modern tech is that it reduces or tries to eliminate intentionality on the part of the user, and make the user experience completely frictionless. But some of that "friction" is important, intentionality is important, without it we are just mindless consumers at the beck and call of marketers and big tech companies. Music apps don't need to decide what you listen to and in what order, being able to get a mix based on a song or artist is one thing, but the tiktok-ified endless autoplay of songs with no user input is... not good. especially when you grow up with that you lose so much.

    Or social media I think we all know is a toxic time suck and honestly just a mindless addiction for many, even this place can take on that role, I know it does sometimes for me, it's easier to scroll than face whatever stressful thought or situation is at hand... and fine, maybe that urge to distraction isn't going away, but on reflection I find scrolling to be the least-soothing way of scratching that itch... So it would be better if it wasn't quite so frictionless, to help break the feedback loop.

    Push notifications (for things other than messaging) are another insidious way that such behavioral patterns are fostered. For the computer nerds, I think of it as like an interrupt for my attention, it breaks the flow of what I'm doing and demands I look at it, and frankly 80% of push notifications just don't deserve that level of priority. But because exerting any control or intentionality over those notifications is made to be extra effort in the name of UX streamlining, most people just have these annoying interrupts conditioning their brain at the whims of whoever controls the apps.

    In such a tech dependent world, user control over software is way more critical than it's ever been, and for all their annoyingness and often mediocre or bad takes on other topics, free software people have been hammering on that for years and building alternatives. All that to say: I've been using a linux phone (pinephone pro) as my only phone for the better part of 6 months now and it's been a breath of fresh air. I'm reading again for the first time in years, I'm building a music collection that I actually own, I'm starting to cut the tether to big tech spyware platforms, but I'm not disconnected from the world.

    The point is: it's not a dumbphone, it just has some extra friction in places, and that has enabled me to be a lot more intentional about my use. It's slower, and the battery life is worse, and lots of other tradeoffs, but in practical terms mostly what that has led to is me being more intentional about my consumption. I can always just go on a computer and browse to my heart's content, or put videos on the TV all night, but the device that's with me all the time is optimized for the things I care about, not for spying on me and robbing me of my attention and sanity.

    (and fwiw linux phones aren't really non-nerd ready yet unless your requirements are pretty basic, but I could see the next gen of them being much closer to linux-on-the-PC levels of easy. It's getting better every month)

    But the lower tech alternative is what you are seeing more and more on places like r/dumbphones (and I have adopted pieces of this as well): purpose built devices. Instead of one device that does everything (including a bunch of stuff you don't even want it to and don't get any agency over as an end user), people are rediscovering the utility of having different tools for different tasks:

    • A small notebook replaces a huge power-hungry phone screen+stylus for taking notes
    • A digital camera replaces the AI-mangled modern smartphone camera for high fidelity photos.
    • A little game system replaces the microtransaction and predatory-mechanic laden cornucopia that is mobile games.
    • A book or ereader replaces the eyestrain-inducing, sleep-ruining experience of reading long-form text on a bright little phone screen.
    • A watch keeps the time, even when your phone would have long since run out of battery, and serves as a superior alarm clock for many circumstances, etc.
    • A wallet holds cash (okay and cards... and I guess most people haven't abandoned these yet) that can be used to pay for goods and services, without the limitations of battery, internet connection, spying, etc. of mobile payment schemes. venmo/paypal/whatever are good to have in your back pocket, but IMO are really only like, revolutionary, if you're comparing them to credit cards and bank transfers, especially in the US where there's no other good system for easily transferring money digitally.
    • wired headphones/earbuds can be much more durable alternatives to made-for-disposal hermetically sealed bluetooth pods, they are cheaper, they can sound better, they are available in a plethora of options and repairable when they break. Not that bluetooth is verboten, many bt devices are better, but the airpods and those modeled after it are pretty trash.
    • if you are picky about such things, a dedicated audio player can play music, audiobooks, podcasts, for longer, in better quality, with less interruptions, than a smartphone. I'm less certain about this one personally, as even dumphones can usually have headphones and play music for you (some even support FM which is cool and saves battery over streaming), but it all depends on your preferences!
    • And the titular dumbphones hold the potential to be much longer-lasting, more reliable makers of calls and texts, by virtue of being simpler. having a phone's primary purpose return to being communication makes it better at that role...

    Now none of this is to say you should carry all this stuff and more all the time. But it's something you can be intentional about and tailor to your needs!

    Maybe you're a theory-head without a rigid schedule: skip the games, camera, watch, headphones, etc and just carry an ereader, a notebook and a dumbphone

    Or you're more of a direct action andy, you can leave the dumbphone (the only one that can be used to track you still) at home, or skip it entirely, or get a device with killswitches! Much harder to do if you limit yourself to the Apple/Android dichotomy

    So yeah, point is you can pick what things you actually care about and bring those, when appropriate, and use them when you want to rather than doing, like, everything everywhere all at once with your smartphone. Yes you can tweak your smartphone to avoid many of these issues, and maybe that's good enough for you, (I encourage it, just give it serious thought, be intentional about what you really want to allow), but some are just unavoidable, and much like you are not immune to propaganda, none of us are immune to the baked in effects of marketers, big tech addiction-mongers. The simplest way to step away from the all-encompassing absorption machines in our pockets is to not have one, and to consider their replacements carefully, even if other paths are workable.

    I'm pretty sure !matt-jokerfied originally got me thinking about "friction" in this context, and this has all been marinating and steering my choices ever since, culminating with this linux phone that I can customize to my heart's content and does not have any of the built in addictive/harmful/spying apps that all my android phones always did. Oh and I can repair it rather than it becoming useless, physically and software-wise, in just a few short years.

    I'm still a tech dweeb, I just want it to enhance people's lives and liberate them not make them worse and more dependent.

    49
    Toxic: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn’t tell the public, government
    minnesotareformer.com Toxic: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn’t tell the public, government - Minnesota Reformer

    3M knew its chemicals were toxic decades ago, but didn’t tell the public or government, internal documents show.

    Toxic: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn’t tell the public, government - Minnesota Reformer

    Not a brand new article but it was new to me

    >Internal 3M documents show: >- In the 1950s, 3M animal studies consistently found its PFAS chemicals were toxic. >- By the early 1960s, 3M knew the chemicals didn’t degrade in the environment. >- 3M knew by the 1970s its chemicals were widely present in the blood of the general U.S. population. >- A 1970 study of fish had to be abandoned “to avoid severe stream pollution” and because all the fish died. After being exposed to a chemical, the fish couldn’t stay upright and kept crashing into the fish tank and dying. >- By 1976, 3M knew the chemicals were in its plant workers’ blood at higher levels than normal. >- A study of a chemical’s effect on 20 rhesus monkeys in 1978 had to be aborted after 20 days because all the exposed monkeys died. >- In 1979, a 3M scientist warned that perfluorochemicals posed a cancer risk because they are “known to persist for a long time in the body and thereby give long-term chronic exposure.” >- In 1979, 3M lawyers advised the company to conceal a 3M chemical compound found in human blood. >- In 1983, 3M scientists concluded that concerns about its chemicals “give rise to legitimate questions about the persistence, accumulation potential, and ecotoxicity of fluorochemicals in the environment.” >- Purdy wrote in his resignation letter that in the 1990s, 3M told researchers not to write down their thoughts or have email discussions because of how their “speculations” might be viewed in legal discovery. >- 3M told employees to mark documents as “attorney-client privileged” regardless of whether attorneys were involved, the state alleged, and minutes of meetings were edited to omit references to health hazards. >- In 1997, 3M gave DuPont a “material safety data sheet” — which lays out potential hazards — for a chemical. It read, “Warning: contains a chemical which can cause cancer,” citing 1983 and 1993 studies by 3M and DuPont. But 3M removed the label that same year and continued to sell the products for decades without warning.

    More

    >Donald Taves, a researcher at the University of Rochester, first reported in the scientific journal Nature in 1968 that the general population had been exposed to the compounds. Then Taves discovered his own blood contained it, according to a 3M document marked “confidential,” obtained in the Minnesota attorney general’s lawsuit. > >Taves was working with Warren Guy and Wallace Brey at the University of Florida on a research paper. > >3M chemist G.H. Crawford took the phone call from Taves, and admitted nothing. He wrote in a confidential interoffice memo: “We (pleaded) ignorance but advised him that Scotchgard was a polymeric material not a F.C. acid.” > >(In fact, by this point, the company knew its chemicals accumulated in the human body and were toxic, Swanson told a congressional committee. Moreover, Swanson added, 3M refused to identify the chemicals in its products, which for a generation thwarted the scientific community’s understanding of their health impacts.) > >Taves, Guy and Brey later discovered plasma from blood banks in five cities suggested “widespread contamination of human tissues with trace amounts of organic fluorocompounds derived from commercial products” such as floor waxes, wax paper, leather and fabric conditioning agents. > >After getting the phone calls from researchers, 3M began analyzing its fluorine compounds. Within weeks, they found a compound that was a likely match. > >By late 1975, 3M sent employees to see Guy and Taves at the University of Rochester, where they agreed to try to isolate and identify fluorochemicals in blood. > >In 1976, the company began sampling employees’ blood. > >Tests showed workers at 3M’s Cottage Grove plant called Chemolite had up to 1,000 times the normal amount of fluorochemicals in their blood.

    It just goes on and on like this. fuckin grim stuff

    3
    Can we appropriate the "groups whom the law protects but does not bind" quote?

    The quote:

    >Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: > >There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. > >There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

    And apparently it originates from the comments of this blog post, not from the commonly attributed CIA stooge: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

    It's pretty lib subject matter on the whole and I'm not holding out hope that Mr Wilhoit is a marxist, but it actually maps pretty well. I was just talking to a friend about how the NLRB rulings against starbucks are doing literally nothing to stop them from union-busting and penalizing union workers, and this popped into my head:

    >It's almost like there's a class who the law protects but does not bind, and a class who the law binds but does not protect or something

    Mr. Wilhoit was onto something but it's not celebrities or immigrants or whoever he meant it about, it's the working class and the ruling class. Also I really want to eventually get called a tankie for quoting some liberal blog reply guy. I just think it would be funny

    PS: check out his music, it's not bad:

    https://www.broadheath.com/mp3s.html https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgT0vSWjBh4gAtab6JZgVrA/videos

    5
    I Overheard a Secret Chinese Meeting in Micronesia on Vacation - Rare Earth

    I wanted to say "presented without comment" but I can't help myself so

    "DAE think all politics besides anglosphere aligned liberalism is just self righteous utopianism?" !smuglord

    7
    beehaw might be leaving the fediverse
    beehaw.org The Beehaw project is entering some significant challenges - Beehaw

    There is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our choice of a platform would bring. Specifically, we chose Lemmy as th...

    I'm sure people here can empathize with having all the tech wizards get burnt out and leave, and all the various teething problems but this is a bit much... lemmy has its issues but plenty of sites larger and smaller than beehaw are getting on just fine. Perhaps the lib sysadmins are just going back to brunch?

    76
    So what the fuck was up with China training mujahideen?

    Been listening to the latest blowback, and was a bit astonished to hear that China was a significant player in hosting training camps for the earlier generations of jihadis, but they don't go into a lot of detail on china's motivations or anything. This would have been in the period after mao's death, iirc they said 1979

    what's up with that? was the sino soviet split that severe that they sought to undermine and destroy the USSR?

    5
    hexbear @hexbear.net YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them] @hexbear.net
    test post pls ignore

    going to test image sizing in the comments, fr please ignore

    0
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)YE
    YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them] @hexbear.net
    Posts 22
    Comments 841