hostility never changed anyone’s mind
Chronic abuse absolutely shapes human perception and behavior.
In this case, a lot of Lemmy has been so battered down by “China Bad” propaganda that they’ll straight up deny the threat of climate change to justify rejecting Chinese manufactured goods.
The argument is always “solar/wind still use chemicals” and never “this is the net reliance on extractive industry by energy source”.
That said, general energy conservation is still important. You can’t cut emissions if all your new power just gets funnelled into Grok style AI.
They were at the inflection point back in 2008. They’ve been full tilt towards the improvement side of the curve for nearly two decades.
Europeans demolished their manufacturing sector when they stripped all the wiring out of the walls during the austerity years.
You can’t blame people for buying foreign when you’ve been defunding domestic infrastructure for over a decade.
Funneling migrants into the desert to die isn’t a bug, it’s a feature
Both.
The Wilson/Coolidge Era was nightmarish for immigrants, with a host of laws targeting East Asian migrants and displacing uncountable numbers of industrial workers particularly along the West Coast.
Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback set off a wave of police terror along the Gulf Coast, crippled the agricultural economy, and killed hundreds of migrants forced into transit.
The current border policy funnels hundreds of thousands of migrants through an inhospitality Texas/Arizona desert region that’s killed around 10k-50k people in the last decade.
None of it actually curbs immigration. It all just becomes a black market affair, affording employers a tool to depress wages and cartels an opportunity to press-gang border residents into cattle slavery.
Once Twitter has been (hopefully) de-platformed we can talk about Mastedon and the Fediverse and the idea of a non-corpo platform.
BlueSky is as prone to enshittification as Twitter. If you’re waiting for BlueSky to take off, you’re just setting yourself up for the next rug pull.
I mean, go to BS and enjoy it while it lasts. But don’t think this is the future.
TikTok is popular because it’s addicting, not because it’s useful
TikTok is profitable because it is addictive. But the idea that short-form video is less useful than print or radio is flawed.
I don’t understand why anyone would use this.
For the same reason someone would turn on the TV, download a podcast, or pick up a magazine.
I did not realize the distance between the US and Canada was so big.
There’s a huge gulf between essential and wasteful.