[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 23 points 3 weeks ago

Now I love boiling down the pitfalls of modern western society into large statements like "capitalism bad" and "communism good" as much as anyone, but having dealt with a bunch of people dismiss good change as "that's communism" has made me rethink how I talk about topics online and in person.

Now the accelerationist are gonna be mad about this for sure, but maybe you should start small, and discuss topics at a more local level. Then again the internet is world wide and everyone wants to talk about grand scale things.

Basically, I've stopped telling people outside of my direct circle that leftism cool, and instead talk about socialised medicine programs, pushing for support of worker owned productions and business, getting involved with coop housing. Lot easier when you don't have to bump up against the red scare.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 9 points 6 months ago

I don't think we'll see this any time soon, because corpos probably won't listen to any creative that presents this, but I want something where the LLM runs locally and is just used to interpret what you are asking for but the dialogue responses are all still written by a writer. Then you can make the user interaction feel more intuitive, but the design of the story and mechanics can just respond to the implied tone, questions, prompts, keywords from the user.

Then you could have a dialogue tree that responds with a nice well constructed narrative, but a user who asked something casually vs accusatory might end up with slightly different information.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I think that things like wanting to celebrate a country and acknowledgement and a day of mourning and acknowledgement of the horrors that happen to indigenous people can both happen in parallel.

Honestly, if it's intended to be a day about celebration for the history of a country it'd be cool if in the future people could celebrate the reparations and acknowledgement that have been made since now. It's like the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was yesterday and the second best time is today. So a movement like this is good because in the future it'll be another thing to celebrate for your country.

On a related tangent, you guys could get another holiday specifically for remembrance of the lives lost from colonialism and get another holiday! Canada did it a few years back and now they only have 2 months with out a federal holiday.

Edit: For context, this is coming from the perspective of a Canadian, and our founding fucked over the indigenous pretty badly here well up until current day, but super fucked them up until like as late as the 1990s, so that's where I'm coming from with my feelings and thoughts.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 4 points 8 months ago

In life it's been mostly pure luck, but one of the few things I really recommend is to keep in the loop about rebates, programs and services offered by my federal and provincial government. Stuff like rebates on first time home buying, electric bikes, and energy efficient equipment is nice cause I bet I saved at least 3000$ total.

In recent time tho the biggest one has been getting a bicycle. I got an e-bike but even a regular bike helped me stop paying through the nose for gas when I was just burning it mostly sitting in traffic.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 7 points 9 months ago

I've experienced a similar decline in interest. Mostly because of one key thing, I got an e-bike.

The cost of gas was way too expensive, and I considered selling my gas powered car and buying an EV but the used and new market is well above anything I can afford, they only seem to produce SUVs or crossovers instead of anything the size of a Honda civic. I figured I'd just keep the gas car I have until it beefs it and use it for multi person trips, or far away trips.

Like it really is hard to beat when I can spend 1500-3000 on a bike that costs pocket change to charge, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg to maintain. Honestly with the lack of public transit in a lot of Canada, a bike and whatever car you already have is a great way to save on gas money.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago

Try to indulge me, as I try to humanize the people you are talking about in a way that might resonate with you.

Imagine you work 40hrs a week, getting paid minimum wage or next to minimum wage, the housing market continues to worsen around you as rent continues to increase but wages don't. If you have a place already and are just barely scraping by living paycheck to paycheck, which a lot of people are these days. One small bad financial day from an emergency or unexpected cost and you're screwed. You miss your rent payment and you get evicted. Now, if you don't have a safety net of people, which we can't guarantee everyone does have living family or friends that will take you in for a month while you get back on your feet, you become homeless. You get fired from work because you've taken too many unpaid days off to try and get your life sorted so you don't have to sleep on the streets. Now you can't get another job because most places won't hire you without an address, and collecting unemployment becomes difficult because if you have no address and no direct deposit you can't get it mailed to you to claim.

As for the drugs that you say they have chosen to ruin their lives with, a pack of cigarettes, a small bag of weed, some opiates, or alcohol costs a whole lot less than rent for a month or even a motel room for the night.

The financial and housing situation for a lot of people out there in the world is really fragile, and if you add on other issues that I didn't list such as mental health issues, lack of education or job experience with any education you have, or existing addiction, it can really add up and make it so your going from sleeping in a small bachelor's apartment one night to sleeping on a park bench the next.

I don't fully ascribe to the concept of communism myself (it's a good label for most folks but I'm too picky about nitty gritty stuff so say I like it when I would want to adjust a few things about it), but I definitely think social housing is how you fix homelessness. Cities and states / provinces waste more money dealing with homelessness the way they do now then just building them socialized housing.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 6 points 11 months ago

It would actually be quite based if the Liberals fixed our shitty First Past The Post system in a last ditch effort to keep power. I wonder if the polling would scare them enough to do so or if they're too overconfident to think that they don't need it.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 15 points 11 months ago

I mean if you're already using a Windows machine for work you're not gonna have to switch.

I imagine unless you're self employed, you are probably given a machine to work on with a predefined operating system picked by your employer. If someone is in a place where they're forced to use windows and the employer is making them pay for this equipment and software out of pocket, then that's wicked scummy of the employer.

I'm just saying this cause I imagine the original comment your replying to has some implicit context of "when possible" or "on my own machine".

Also it's a bummer your software doesn't work on Linux, nothing worse than being locked into a platform.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

I guess it's a matter of semantics and if you're an existing rich person, right? Cause from the perspective of the rich closing up those loop holes would be perceived as purely benefitting the poor.

For neutral rules to truly be neutral, you almost need to ensure there are services and programs to bring that opportunity to everyone, else it's just appears more fair without actually increasing accessibility. Which to your point would be something like UBI.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

Is there a reason why you chose to be reactionary on the internet today?

This isn't Reddit, you can be nicer than this, and maybe discuss the point about libertarianism that you like instead of just jumping to a bad faith argument against another economic system that neither OP, nor the post has brought up.

Remember there's a person on the other side of the screen. Unless it's a bit of course, but you know better than to take the bait of bots.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Oh I don't want to be mistaken, I agree people shouldn't wait around if they are able, it's just that there are a lot of barriers in the way.

I kinda have the mind set of if you're able to make the change yourself now do it, and if not complain and demand accessibility for it until you can.

[-] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago

Corporations have been shifting blame on to regular people for years, the whole carbon footprint concept was basically invented to shame individuals.

While individual action is important, the biggest individual action we can take is really for societal and legislative changes.

For example, in order to avoid motor vehicles, and flying, the government needs to invest money into viable alternatives. We need better bike, active transport, and transit systems. In order to eat more veggies and reduce agriculture emissions we need the govt to subsidize and incentivize those alternatives to the consumers. Cause poverty certainly gets in the way of dropping things like Dairy especially. Second hand goods, without enforcement of the right to repair means that you're gambling on whether or not you're going to be able to find someone or parts to fix your used thing in the event something breaks.

I could go on, but the gist of it is access to a lot of the things you're asking for requires government change. Some folks are lucky or diehard enough to find the means to make these changes themselves, but the everyday person needs help.

I will also say, this isn't a doomerist view on things. The government at all levels has been using the money from the Carbon tax to fund things like the Greener Homes Grant, Bike and eBike rebates, and EV rebates, and adoption is high! Look at all the houses switching to heat pumps in the last few years since these rebates have come into play!

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AlmightyTritan

joined 1 year ago