FWIW, some become firefighters because they enjoy lighting things on fire. The correlation between firefighters and arsonists is very strong. But even then, nobody (except maybe some cops) has ever seen firefighters roll up to a scene and thought “well my day just got worse.”
Also, the comparison between the two is often confused by the fact that people tend to think of politics as a single left/right line. This is mostly because we as citizens vote for representatives, instead of voting for policies directly. And since we only get to vote for one representative, their different policies all get lumped together. In reality, the political spectrum is more like a 5D matrix, where things like personal freedom/authoritarianism, fiscal policy, religious freedom, etc exist on entirely separate axes.
One of the big differences between anarchists and libertarians tends to be fiscal policy and corporate regulation. Anarchists still tend to want things like public utilities, roads, trash collection, public art, universal healthcare, etc… They tend to see these as acceptable forms of government. Anarchists tend to be about collective action, and these things are an extension of that. They’re things that are too big to realistically build on an individual level, and they benefit everyone.
The “anarchy” part really comes into play when discussing personal freedoms, as anarchists tend to rebel against restrictions on what they are allowed to do. They tend to argue that individuals should have a lot more personal freedom, and local society should be correcting bad behaviors through social pressure (and use of force, if it comes to that). Break the social contract, and you’re punished by your neighbors until the behavior is corrected.
Anarchists also tend to argue for heavy corporate regulation, because monolithic “too big to fail” corporations will be able to unfairly exert external pressure on local communities. An example of this in action is Walmart running a new store at a net loss until all of the locally owned grocery stores are priced out and forced to close, at which point Walmart is the only grocer and can increase their prices. It’s not a perfect example, because anarchists tend to be against private property in general. Meaning the “locally owned grocers” would be more like a collective neighborhood garden. But it at least gets the point across.
To make a bad metaphor: An anarchist believes the government should pay for the neighborhood’s road using taxes, but the local neighborhood gets to decide what the speed limit (and other various rules of the road) should be.
All of those public works I listed in the second paragraph are things that libertarians would prefer to remove from the government’s purview entirely, by saying that a private company should be able to take over them instead of using taxes to pay for them. Libertarians are definitely more in the “every man is an island” basket. They tend to see public services, utilities, etc as frivolous government overreach. They tend to think that people should pay private companies to do these things, instead of paying taxes to have the government do them.
This stems from the idea that a private company will be more efficient than the government, which would conceivably lower costs while improving quality and agility. If you don’t like how a company does something, you can use the free market to find (or create) a new company instead. Essentially, under libertarianism, you’re not beholden to whatever the government decides to do, and libertarians think that extreme personal freedom should extend to corporations as well. They tend to argue for market deregulation and fewer government programs as a result.
To extend that bad metaphor: A libertarian thinks each neighbor should maintain their own section of the road out of their own personal effort/funds, and each homeowner gets to decide the rules for using their section of the road.
There is no national referendum in the US. Whoever told you there is has misinformed you.
Also, you think Americans get time off work to vote? Lol. Lmao, even. Americans don’t get time off to vote. ~40% of Americans didn’t vote at all in the last presidential election, and that has the largest turnout. And you think they’re going to take time off work for a (non-existent) referendum vote?
One of the biggest reasons that America’s politics skews right is because the rich and retired are the ones who have time to reliably vote, and America’s rich and retired demographics both skew conservative. Democrats have much higher numbers when you look at the raw numbers, but democrats also largely don’t vote because they’re poor working class people who can’t afford time off (or can’t set their own schedule to ensure they have time).
If a minimum wage cashier works an 8 hour shift on Election Day, you think they’re going to drive all the way across town (because conservatives closed “consolidated” all the polling locations in liberal areas) and spend 4 hours in line to vote after their shift? No, they’re going home to crash, because they’ve been on their feet all day and they’re exhausted.
I mean, if I was at a bar and trying to relax, I’d consider kicking out whichever cunt decided to put on something stressful like that. Imagine going to a yoga class and insisting that they change their binaural tone background soundscape to death metal instead. If I want to watch the news, I’ll tune into it. I get enough doom and gloom in my daily life, I don’t need it shoved in my face when I’m trying to relax.
Lol. Lmao, even. They’ve officially started expecting payment if you reject cookies.
That is $375M to a single person. This wasn’t a class action. This was a precedent-setting case that opens the floodgates for future lawsuits. Until now, actually getting courts to agree with plaintiffs has been impossible. But since courts use precedent, this allows future plaintiffs to refer to it when filing their own lawsuits.
This is the big distinction. I think the Harry Potter films are fantastic movies. Not from a critical standpoint, but simply from a “they’re nostalgic and fun to watch, and the music is nice” standpoint.
…Which is why I pirate them. Fuck JKR, she isn’t getting a cent from me.
That and the fact that the plant is watching all of their product spoil on the shelves. Fresh meat isn’t exactly shelf-stable, and we’re quickly approaching “every single piece of meat in the plant needs to be thrown out. All of the machinery needs to be disassembled and thoroughly cleaned to disinfect it before any work can resume” levels.
Because that’s his primary voting bloc. That last ~35% is hardline maga and won’t turn against him even if he’s raping their babies in front of them. But that was enough to get him elected, because “didn’t vote” is an even larger group.
+1 for the anti-dandruff shampoo trick. I keep a bottle in the cabinet for when I work outside in the summer. It’s the only thing that prevents massive breakouts (all over my chest and shoulders) after I sweat a lot. Use it like a face/body wash, and let it sit for an extra minute or two (however long the bottle says) before you rinse. For particularly bad/stubborn spots, I use it like an overnight spot treatment. Dab it on directly and let it dry before bed, then rinse off in the morning.
It will only make a difference if the acne is actually fungal. But if it is, your friend will likely see a world of difference.
Yup, they somehow managed to bundle obvious spyware and bold-faced propaganda into a single app, and somehow plenty of people seem okay with that.
First thing? Probably panic. Second thing? Probably try to wake myself up. Third thing? Probably try to find some rational way that I just got isekai’ed as a billionaire.
After it finally sank in, I’d probably consider lobbying for things before I lose touch with where I used to be. Right to repair, universal healthcare, UBI, etc…
Yes, it includes things like a TOTP manager, text file storage, family sharing, etc… Nothing super groundbreaking, but it’s some quality of life stuff that plenty of people have been happy to pay less than a dollar per month for.
Pretty much this. Cloud storage isn’t perfect, but it sure does make proper 3-2-1 backup hygiene easier. 3 backups, on 2 different mediums, 1 of them off site. Cloud storage accomplishes both the 2 and 1, because it is both a different medium and off site.
The fact that you can automatically sync remotely is a big bonus too, because off-site backups historically have a problem where they fall out of date without active attention. For instance, if you have a tape backup system stored in a warehouse across town, those tapes are only as up-to-date as the last time you took the time to drive across town and update them. But with cloud storage, you can automatically sync your folders to keep things up to date in near real time. Plus, your traditional off-site backup is only as secured from things like natural disasters if you’re willing to travel fairly long distances to make them. Those tapes in a warehouse across town won’t survive if the entire town is hit by a natural disaster like a wildfire or flood.
For instance, maybe I make an update on my laptop, and then want to access it on my phone. Even with SyncThing, my laptop and phone won’t sync with each other unless they’re able to find each other on the same network. If I’m not on a trusted network at the time, (e.g. I’m at work on my employer’s WiFi, or traveling and using hotel WiFi) that makes syncing difficult. But with cloud storage, they can both essentially use that as a relay. My laptop updates the cloud, and then my phone pulls that update. Now both devices are up-to-date without actually needing to discover each other on a trusted network.
Yeah, it actually gives me an idea for a stamp… Sort of like those “where is George” stamps that people put on $1 bills.
Believe it or not, there were actually several notable “Jews for Hitler” types of movements in Germany. They were conservative Jews who supported Hitler’s conservative views more than they feared his antisemitism. They hand-waved away the antisemitism, believing that it was over-exaggerated to garner votes.
People are dumb, and many will naturally want to believe that persecution is something that happens to immoral people. If someone is being persecuted, it’s obviously because they did something to deserve it. It can’t happen to me, because I am moral and have done nothing to deserve it! Because if I accept that persecution can happen to moral people, then that would conflict with my established worldview that the world is inherently just. I am successful, and therefore I am just. And unjust things don’t happen to just people. Because accepting that the world is unjust means accepting that things like disasters, disabilities, diseases, and systemic persecution could happen to me. And that is scary, so I choose to reject that possibility and insist that the world is inherently just!
Yeah. That really jumped out at me. My very first thought was “Americans have privacy protections?”
Yeah, the lockdown was enlightening. I lived alone through the entire two year shutdown. I still saw coworkers (because I was working for the government and forced to come into the office) but that was the entire extent of my in-person socialization. And I was perfectly content with that. I’d hop on Discord with some friends after work, and would socialize all night long. On the weekends, if I was playing a single player game, I could easily go two and a half days (Friday evening into Monday morning) without saying a single word.
But extroverts lost their goddamned minds. Half of them were power-walking in the overcrowded local park, even though they had never visited the park before. They just wanted an excuse to leave the house. The other half were ripping their houses down to the studs and completely rebuilding the interiors… Because they never spent any time at home until that point, and suddenly small annoyances about their living areas built up to major complaints. Half of them were rallying against masks, just because conservatives were promising a return to normalcy.