This is tragic.

Language is really important, to a degree that most mono-lingual people just do not fathom. I am mono-lingual, when I was younger I thought language was just a way to communicate. That language diversity is a bad thing, because it creates barriers between people groups. I thought that in a globally connected world not knowing the most popular language puts people at a disadvantage, so we ought to all learn the same language, and obviously that should be the one I grew up with.

That is a deeply colonial mindset. English, French, and Spanish are only as popular as they are because of Colonialism. The world is globally connected today because certain groups of people worked very hard to conquer, exploit, and repress everyone they could. This process continues today, in different forms. The unmitigated disaster that is the Climate Crisis has been a direct result of colonization and the economic system it created. Nearly every component of this situation, climate emergency, language extinction, globalized planet, is the result of horrible systems and acts. So the idea that people should try to fit into this world, that easier communication on the terms of the conquerers is good, is wrong. I was wrong, and you might be too.

The other part of this that's important is the value of language. I will focus on one aspect of that value. More than simple communication, the languages we know structure the ways we can think. The relationships between concepts in a language, as well as the concepts themselves, set the stage for the sorts of thoughts a speaker (or signer or writer) can have. Language diversity matters in part because diversity in language means diversity in thought.

There are whole sets of concepts you and I cannot fathom, because we lack the linguistic framework to explore them. This touches everything we experience, from emotions to gender to philosophy to law to the common experiences we have every day. Look around you, and I'm sure you can find something you lack the words for. The particular way that a tree's branches connect and sway, the vast variety of sounds that machines make, the particular feeling of knowing something you can never hope to fully convey. And I'm just an English speaker, think of all the possible ideas that these peoples who are losing their languages do have, and imagine the infinite possibility of what they could concieve. Such a tiny sliver of life thinking is, but even it's consideration overwhelms me. What endless beauty there is in the possibilities our lives contain, yet all of it is being systematically destroyed. There is a feeling I get when thinking about this, maybe you get it too, "tragic" feels inadequate for such a thing.

It feels so weird to see her character compared to cartoonishly evil ones like Darth Vader and the Joker. When watching the movie she is clearly a very damaged person, her character is tragic. The way she treats Gump makes sense, her culture is intensely ableist which combined with her trauma provides context to her actions. The idea that she is somehow a bigger asshole than a domestic terrorist with no concrete backstory, a serial killer, or even evil space jesus, is ridiculous. Frankly it reeks of casual sexism whenever I see people smear her, it feels like folks are either parrotting the opinions they found online, or never tried to understand her character while watching the movie.

It's good to see this division inside the French State's forces. Clearly the pressure from recent protests is having an effect. Let's hope these cops, judges, and politicians ruin their collective ability to maintain this perverse 'order'.

Wow, this is sick! Thanks for posting your art, it's great to see even if I've never played the game.

"Food we eat" is half the size of "livestock feed". Plus look at how small wetlands/deserts are, wetlands especially are essential to climate resillience. What egregiously bad land use, wow. Thanks for this post, it's great.

I get that the EFF has to say this bill has "laudable goals" for political reasons, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Protecting children is a typical excuse for broad expansion of State power, and this is no different. Don't be fooled, and remember it's the democrats who are trying to push this through. Both major political parties in the US are enemies to personal autonomy, one is just more subtle about it. Liberation will never come from within the ruling power structure.

I have one of those too! Glad yours is blooming. Mine flowers sometimes, but sadly it got infected with thrips a couple years ago and I haven't been able to kill them. It flowers less often, but does okay with regular maintenance on my end (rubbing all the surfaces with a little neem oil and soap in water).

For real, this is sobering information. I already try to avoid microwaving plastics, but I'm gonna be even more careful now, and try to spread this study. Billions of nanoplastics per square centimeter, it's scary to think about the size of containers, number that would likely be used in a day, and the fact that infants are so small with that information in context.

Capitalism is inherently contradictory to my basic values, terrible at efficient economic allocation, actively destroying everything, and is built on a foundation of war and genocide.

I believe that everyone should have as much autonomy as possible. Capitalism's basic premise is that economic allocation is determined by those who own capital, allocation of the resources communities and individuals use is an autonomy problem. Since Capitalism concentrates power among a very few, it is actively limiting the autonomy of literally billions of people for the benefit of less than a thousand.

The allocation of resources itself, the basic purpose of any economic system, is incredibly inefficient undee Capitalism. Take food, vast amounts are produced, enough to feed everyone, yet people starved to death while I was writing this. Not only that, food itself is peoduced in such a way as to maximize profit. This comes at the expense of local food systems, which have been in large part dismantled by environmental damage. It comes at the expense of vast CO2 emissions to run the machines that mine phosphorous, manufacture fertilizer and pesticides, run the various pieces of farm equipment, process food, and the planes, ships, trucks that ship it to stores. It comes at the expense of soil health, which monocropping, tilling, fallow, and agrochemicals all harm. This is just food, look at any other sphere of human activity and you will find a similar story. Meaningful measures of efficiency and system health are ignored to pump out as much profit as possible, and this gets called "efficient".

Capitalism is the great machine that is destroying everything. Under it's logic of endless expansion we have seen entire ecosystems bulldozed and turned into suburbs, watched millions of people be enslaved even in the present day, witnessed war and genocide on a scale never before fathomed. Both world wars happenned under Capitalism, and war has continued unabated ever since. The so-called United States is the dominant Capitalist power on Earth, and holds millions of people in legal slavery, if you don't believe me read the 13th amendment to its constitution. Many other people are describing the results of ecosystem destruction, the Climate Catastrophe, as their primary reason for anti-capitalist beliefs.

Capitalism as a system grew under feudalism before supplanting it, and directly springboarded off of Colonialism to become the dominant economic system of this world. The horrors of colonization follow(ed) a similar logic of expansion to capital, exploiting millions of people through slavery and genocide, spreading plagues that have killed countless individuals and entire cultures, introducing poverty to places where the concept had not preciously made sense. Capitalism cannot be separated from its historical roots, if you want to learn more about this I recommend the, "A ______ People's History of the United States" series of books. I'd prioritize the Indigenous and Black histories.

This is an indictment of Capitalism, but presents no alternatives. I will do that here.

Indigenous cultures had/have land-based economies that center care. This is not an alternative, it is thousands of them, each adapted to a local ecosystem. In order to survive we need to localize resource production, and land-based economies are the way to do that. I would recommend learning about how Indigenous people groups in your area thrived before Colonialism forcibly severed many of their connections to place, how they survive today, and how they are working to heal their relationships to the land. A related concept is that of the gift economy, a common practice for many groups world-wide, the particulars of which are as diverse as our species. Look into it, gift economies work, and operate on principles that are essentially as "anti-capitalism" as one can get.

Commons-based peer production is another, complimentary option for future economic systems. It is directly born out of the open source software movement, and imagines structuring all production around simular principles. People produce for themselves and their peers, keeping resources in common to ensure equitable allocation. If you do not believe commons can work, I would recommend looking into Ostrom's eight principles for managing commons, just highlight that phrase and paste it into a search engine. A related concept is that of "cosmo-local production". The idea is that physical production is localized to reduce impact on the planet (local), while information on process is shared freely with everyone (cosmo). This ties into the idea of "donut economics" which is basically the idea that we should meet human needs while staying within planetary boundaries, the inside and outside of the metaphorical donut respectively. Look up any of these terms and you will find loads of thought-provoking writing, imagining a better world. Plus many of the people doing the theorizing are programmers like you, I'm sure you'll find ideas that resonate with you if you look for them here.

It took courage to make this post, thanks for starting some interesting discussions. I might believe you are wrong about Capitalism, but I respect your honesty and willingness to engage with other ideas here. I would strongly encourage reading further to understand these concepts on a deeper level than a Lemmy comment can give you, especially the economic alternatives, I basically just skimmed over a whole field of emerging theory.

Edit: accidentally posted before I was done, added 3 paragraphs.

I think we gotta work on building community if we want to see people really move away from streaming services. One person with a NAS in a small apartment building could help a lot of their neighbors out with entertainment. It would be more work for the person hosting, but if the folks who benefit help their friend out too it might end up being less work overall.

I'd give someone access, teach them how to use the software, and download some of their favorite shows if they let me borrow their truck when I needed, shared dinner sometimes, or helped me clean house. I think a lot of folks would benefit from that kind of thing, but it would require us making friends with our neighbors. Which, on reflection, is actually really really hard. I imagine it would be kinda awkward to start the conversations around this, but you'd get around the step of everyone getting their own NAS at least!

It's important to question the beliefs we're raised with, especially when seeking truth as scientists tend to do. I'm glad to see research like this, and especially the bit at the end of the abstract about examining prior conclusions that were influenced by patriarchal cultural bias. There's something about how hard this notion of, "men hunt, women gather and take care of children, in all human societies past and present" is to shake that has me reminded of something:

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

That heuristic is generally taken to be accurate among the scientifically literate, Carl Sagan coined it even, but it is deeply flawed. Cultural notions of ordinary define what is seen as extraordinary. An idea that is normalized in our society needs much less evidence to convince people of it, while one that goes against normality needs much more to even begin to gain traction. The concept is flawed because 'ordinary' is socially defined, so while it can be used to discredit obviously wrong ideas like the existence of ghosts, it can also be used to discredit obviously wrong ideas like the CIA using LSD to (try to) control peoples' minds. Pretty extraordinary claim, but it did happen. Maybe you see the issue with this heuristic, while the idea expressed is intuitive, it hides a sneaky cultural bias.

I think something similar goes on with ideas like the one this study refutes. It seems so clear in our patriarchal society that men and women are different, suited to different roles as we've been told so many times growing up, that the opposite concept is extraordinary. So you get scientists coming up with truly extraordinary explanations of why women are buried with hunting tools to maintain their conception of 'normal', and anyone who wants to refute it needs to go above-and-beyond only to still be met with skepticism.

To be clear, don't actually fuck libertarians. That's how we get more of them.