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What old technology are you surprised is still in use today?
  • COBOL

    Well, I was surprised at the time...

  • The rise of progressivism led corporations to misappropriate progressive values and language. How did this manifest before?

    There might be a better title but it'll do.

    Corporations insincerely adopt progressive themes because, at least in most Western countries, it's become increasingly accepted, popular and seen as ethical in the dominant culture, and therefore is a good marketing strategy for reputation management.

    This phenomenon is widespread, but some core examples are pink/rainbow capitalism, greenwashing, and spin (e.g. presenting exploitation such as outsourcing labor to cheaper markets as "diversity", as opposed to actual diversity programs). A classic example of this insincerity is various companies (Bethesda, BMW, Cisco, General Electric, Mercedes-Benz, Pfizer, Vogue and many more) famously adopting social media rainbow Pride logos only in some regions but not others - improving conditions for SGM is evidently not a true company value, it's marketing.

    I assume that before the normalization of progressive values in these markets, the same type of phony value signaling existed to exploit the dominant values of the time. For example, in the US, patriotism and Christianity.

    ___

    I believe this is an useful topic to explore, because it can give us tools to explain to some of the more casual 'anti-woke' crowd the difference between progressivism and insincere corporate pandering, perhaps by comparing it with examples of corporate pandering abusing their values, perhaps the notorious commercialization of Christmas and Easter holidays for an example.

    6
    "I Smell and See Burned Bodies All the Time": Israeli Soldier Commits Suicide After Taking Part in Gaza Genocide and Lebanon War
  • Fragging- whoops wrong link, Fragging is an established tradition among invading forces, and one the IDF soldiers would be smart to learn if they want to avoid this suicidal PTSD from perpetrating crimes against humanity on innocent citizens.

  • Fan of Flatpaks ...or Not?
  • I actually tried flatpak uninstall --unused and it didn't remove these ones. So there's something odd going on there. My guess is maybe Mint manually installed them through the driver manager program? That's a wild guess, I don't know how it works.

  • The President of the United States posted this message on his account. He wants the Vietnamese to buy SUVs
  • If I had no idea who he was, I could give extreme benefit of the doubt and say it's spin. Claiming a loss is really a win.

    But we do know who he is, so I'm going with imbecility.

  • Soon
  • I agree, it's very tactless.

  • Fan of Flatpaks ...or Not?
  • Mint took a while to handle flatpak decently in the update manager, and now it's a nice experience.

  • Fan of Flatpaks ...or Not?
  • Plus I found on my install flatpak wasn't cleaning up the flatpaks autoinstalled for older versions of nvidia drivers, they were all still listed as dependencies. Not sure who's to blame but that was taking up a few much needed GBs.

  • Soon
  • Where is that constraint coming from? "Death to [x]" is a statement of a desire.

    "Death to Americans" would be a call for the deaths of citizens. Obviously Iran doesn't consider the typical American citizen to be oppressing them, so they are not interested in calling for that.

    Someone yelling "death to America" could still be supporting the death of George W. Bush or Donald Trump, who are Americans. It could even involve combating many in the US military. That's still very different from calling for "death to Americans", because the target is the regime, not its citizens simply for being citizens.

    But I still think you've raised an interesting discussion to have so I've tried to answer it.


    In an ideal world, regime change. Relatively peaceful dissolution is preferable and possible (consider the death of the Soviet Union).

    However, given the ruthlessness of the people with the most power in the US, I suspect they would gladly kill millions of Americans before even considering a peaceful surrender. People are shot by the state in regular protests, let alone one directly threatening the state (case in point - Jan 6 had a protester killed by police). So unless some interesting lucky opportunities open up (such as a military coup), the USA will (continue to) kill Americans to maintain stability, regardless of whether those opposing the USA kill a single American.

    Given that situation, it sounds like any resistance to the US is bad because will likely involve deaths of innocent people. Yes, but the other side of the story is that to do nothing ''also'' results in the deaths of innocent people. To the people running the show, it's completely normal to oversee the constant atrocious social murder of many thousands each year through poverty, artificial scarcity of food and medication, healthcare denial and other neglect in the name of profit. We overproduce enough food to feed everyone, there's enough land and property to house everyone.

    To do nothing is to allow many Americans to keep dying each day from easily preventable deaths. To fix that system will most likely kill many Americans in the process. You can almost simplify it down to a trolley problem - there's no clean solution whichever choice you make. But, for each of us, there is a correct decision.

  • ‘40 Israeli forces’ killed, wounded in complex ambush in northern Gaza: Resistance commander
  • Definitely. On one hand, I don't enjoy celebrating war deaths at all, especially with all the generalizations and complexities at play, but on the other hand, those are active soldiers in an invading army and the bottom line is that their deaths means Gazan lives saved and less power for the genocide project. It is reassuring to know that the resistance is still having victories.

  • French City of Lyon Kicks Out Microsoft
  • In my tired daze I mistakenly read ONLYOFFICE as OpenOffice and was about to yell No!

    The article does well and links to their other article on the OO 9.0 release, which explains why it's probably a smarter choice for this office situation when compared to LibreOffice:

    ONLYOFFICE is one of two options that comes to mind when I think of a solid Microsoft Office alternative on Linux, the other being LibreOffice. Both offer a range of useful features and support a wide range of document formats. What sets ONLYOFFICE apart, though, is its focus on collaboration and generally reliable compatibility with Microsoft Office files.

  • Soon
  • When someone says "death to America", they aren't saying "death to Americans". A government/state is a regime, not all it's people, despite how much as nationalists love to stoke that sort of patriotism. So I have no problem with the slogan, I call for the fall of the US imperialist regime.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America#Interpretation_and_meaning - has some confirmations from various Iranian politicians and a travel writer.

  • Does the creator or the audience determine the meaning of a work of art?
  • A work can have multiple meanings, even unintended meanings. It can even have no intended meaning.

    Its creators define its intended meaning, if any. Valid interpretations can create other meaning from it.

  • Please for gods sake dont use CasaOS
  • Yep, crack economics. Give product out for free until they're dependent, then exploit them.

  • What are the websites, articles, books or games most intellectually stimulating to you?
  • I've found that when I'm deciding to try out something creative or artistic, I start to look for techniques in other people's works when I might otherwise just be enjoying them on a surface level. Anyone can look at a work and say if it's pretty or not, if it seems well-designed, how it makes you feel, but when you start to ask how an artist does that, you quickly discover techniques that you may be able to apply to your own art, your own writing. You can even look at a list of techniques [1] and then start to identify when creators are using them, and how to use them effectively. The more you experience and the more you think about it, the more understanding and the more tools you have at your fingertips. And by forcing yourself to get into D&D, you're throwing yourself into a game that will help you develop that variety of skills, and probably into a scene where plenty of people know enough of those skills that you can rapidly learn from them, see what they do brilliantly and see what they could do better.

  • What are the websites, articles, books or games most intellectually stimulating to you?
  • As for games, I admit I haven't tried many of them but the Explorable Explanations I have tried are great, particularly the ones by Nicky Case (Parable of the Polygons , the Evolution of Trust , the Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds). I'd call these short games even though they lean strongly towards elements of education and simulation.

  • Republicans test a new red line: Denaturalization
  • and the only thing that can stop them is violence at this point

    There are a range of effective violent and non-violent resistance tactics. The important part is understanding that violent tactics will inevitably be necessary to complement the non-violent tactics. Violence alone doesn't work - look at the anarchists around the 1900s who assassinated a range of kings and police chiefs.

    And there’s no winning against a military force like the US.

    There are plenty of countries which have resisted US military invasion. They've faced atrocities and been left with horrific scars, but nonetheless this view of the mighty US military as unbeatable is repeatedly contradicted by its history. And a civil war would provide a different dynamic, so it's a bit of a mystery in my opinion. Obviously not advocating for that, and believe it or not the (whole) military is not an inevitable opponent.

  • How's is Thunderbird? Does anyone even use it?
  • From their post, I'd assume they're looking for both.

  • What should be done with the unemployable people?
  • Since this question is asking "should", I think it's fine to answer with a rational but radical answer:

    • People can be useful to society even if they aren't employed in our current economies. Retired people may not have jobs, but often still perform productive or necessary labor, like maintenance, artistic contributions, child care, historical preservation. When someone isn't working for money, they still often voluntarily work for society!
    • I believe that, generally speaking, it's within society's best interest, even just from an economic standpoint, to support these people even if they aren't formally employable.
    • Looking at most capitalist countries, overproduction is normal. Usable property remains empty just because an owner wants more money for their investment. Perfectly edible food is systematically thrown in bins rather than given to hungry people for free, or rejected by stores because it doesn't look perfect (like an oddly shaped carrot). Clothes are thrown out once they're "unfashionable".

    We have all the resources needed to support everyone, and it wouldn't take much extra effort from a determined government to get those resources where they need to go. There's no reason why unemployed people should be left to starve and freeze simply because they don't have enough income. In our society, the scarcity of basic needs is artificial ('artificial scarcity').

    Automation is seen as a bad thing, a threat, because workers in society are threatened with starvation if they don't have the income needed for food, shelter, medicine and perhaps basic luxuries. But if our political economy were first-and-foremost based around society's needs instead of profiting, and therefore we used our modern technology to automate the production of these basic needs and distribute them, then suddenly automation would mean free time and easier labor!

  • There was a post yesterday havin a giggle about low resource usage Linux setups, shout-out to LOW←TECH magazine's solar-powered site (running Armbian Stretch)
    solar.lowtechmagazine.com About the Solar Powered Website

    This website is solar-powered and self-hosted. It has been designed to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing our content.

    About the Solar Powered Website

    I hope this place won't hug it too hard, it's on 61% battery as of writing. Has translations in fr, de, nl, es, it, pt

    > The average page size of this website is below 0.5 MB – roughly a sixth of the average page size of the original website

    > SERVER: This website runs on an Olimex A20 computer. It has 2 Ghz of processing power, 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of storage. The server draws 1 - 2.5 watts of power. > > SERVER SOFTWARE: The webserver runs Armbian Stretch, a Debian based operating system built around the SUNXI kernel. We wrote technical documentation for configuring the webserver. [comfy's note: worth checking out] > > DESIGN SOFTWARE: The website is built with Pelican, a static site generator. [comfy note: Teppichbrand replied confirming they now use Hugo]

    I also like the dithering aesthetic with the site images, both practical and stylistic.

    9
    Scientists of Lemmy, how would you standardize or improve cooking recipes?

    I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!

    What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?

    69
    A retro pixel ceramic tile mosaic of Luigi

    London, UK

    via https://todon.eu/@RadicalGraffiti/113798811126081860

    0
    "Deny, Defend, Depose" mural

    "Luigi mural spotted in Varna, Bulgaria"

    via https://todon.eu/@RadicalGraffiti/113839508830970372

    0
    Shopfront Luigi Mural

    If I remember correctly, this is a legal mural on a spray-paint shop in Sydney, Australia.

    via https://todon.eu/@RadicalGraffiti/113821907116479158

    Front photo: https://todon.eu/@h1dden@mastodon.social/113796031786633245

    0
    An interesting question, any guesses?

    Stockholm, Sweden.

    via https://todon.eu/@RadicalGraffiti/113950779197396960

    0
    What is something you don't (or didn't) know the name of?

    "Everything has a name", if something is made, used, discovered or imagined, there is probably at least one name for it.

    The cap at the top of a flagpole ('truck'). A single primary vein down the middle of typical leaves ('midrib'). The coating sheath at the end of shoelaces ('aglet'). The creases across the inside of your wrist ('rasceta'). The protective enclosure of a radar, including the nose cone of most airliner planes ('radome'). The square hole in the top of an anvil ('hardy hole'). The iconic football/soccer ball design, that is, the truncated icosahedron with pentagonal black and hexagonal white panels (Adidas's 'Telstar' design). All those different types of cave mineral deposits like stalactites, flowstone, frostwork and moonmilk ('speleothem').

    (Any language is fine)

    3
    What are some examples of 'common sense' which are nonsense?

    Wikipedia defines common sense as "knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument"

    Try to avoid using this topic to express niche or unpopular opinions (they're a dime a dozen) but instead consider provable intuitive facts.

    125
    What common mistake do drivers from outside of your region/state/country make?

    Different local areas have different road rules and different unwritten rules in culture. Or maybe you just have a low bridge. What mistake do non-local drivers make in your area?

    13
    What are some *unique* communities which exist in the Fediverse?

    Much of the Fediverse, especially the most popular communities, are continuations or clones of existing communities from twitter/reddit/etc., which makes sense given the history of these platforms as alternatives to those sites.

    Are there any original communities which exist on the Fediverse with no similar community on the mainstream alternative service?

    7
    Which FOSS projects have enough funding that we should donate elsewhere?

    There were some posts over the holiday season asking for projects to donate to, and for those who have the means to comfortably do so, this is an important gift to consider.

    If there's only a limited amount each of us is able to give, I assume there's no point giving it all to, for one example, The Linux Foundation, because a small personal donation is trivial next to the ~$15,000,000 USD they receive from sponsors dependent on them[1]. I understand that funding sources can be a major and profound source of bias[2] and ideally we would be, for example, helping to make Firefox independent of Google, but until we have more collective power, it's not worth letting smaller important projects struggle instead.

    So, which important projects should we leave to the sponsors, and which really need our support?

    50
    Which is the best organized, best designed online community you've seen?

    Most online communities have a low barrier of entry and effectively no user onboarding, and end up becoming chaotic messes where content is difficult to navigate. Obviously this is fine for more chatty communities, but is unfortunate in more serious and discussion-focused forums and for content archives. Even on Lemmy, there are communities where formatting rules are completely ignored[1]. This results from a combination of site design, moderation, and user respect for the community (three things notoriously bad on reddit-like sites, and well, most popular sites)

    A couple of exceptions to the trend are forums which enforce a barrier of entry and quality control (unfortunately I can't recall any right now, but I would love to hear of some!) and some booru IBs. A booru site is an archive where users upload media without titles and tag it for easy searching. If a booru manages to enforce a decent quality of tagging (and there are mechanical ways to assist with this, such as tag aliases) then the site becomes a well-organized online content community.

    Most boorus I've found allow NSFW content, so here are some work-safe examples:

    ---

    Note: feel welcome to list slow or 'dead' sites!

    10
    Political Memes @lemmy.world comfy @lemmy.ml
    Patsy, it's been three days!!!

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/23370165

    > > "The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force." > > - Marx, German Ideology (1845)

    4
    Patsy, it's been three days!!!

    > "The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force."

    • Marx, German Ideology (1845)
    5