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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The Supreme Court is heavily in favor of “states rights” now, so state politicians know they can cater to special interest groups (for donations of course) with impunity. States are heavily gerrymandered, so they have little risk of losing their position. In some cases, such as book, education, voting, and immigration laws, the goal is to further ensure the states remain Republican in the future (prevent children from growing up “woke,” and prevent immigrants from living there, which tend to vote Dem). Democracy in the U.S. is pretty broken, and is slowly being dismantled further.


  • Yeah, mastodon definitely needs a better algorithm. Algorithms can be designed to promote whatever the maker wants. It doesn’t have to be designed to maximize engagement or the specific kind of engagement that tends to promote crazy conspiracy theories or fascist rhetoric. The algorithm could just be simple collaborative filtering with some randomness thrown in to pop “information bubbles,” which would be much better than what they have now.





  • IDK your personal experience, but it’s almost always the pay. Possibly you’re just matching the pay other companies offer, and the industry doesn’t pay much in the U.S. comparable to trades that require equal training, so there aren’t many workers that go into that trade. Or, the labor market is extremely tight for that trade.

    I was in a similar circumstance, and was able to find quality candidates by raising what we were offering considerably (+30-50% above regional average, according to sites like glassdoor). We were able to attract very good employees away from their previous employers this way. But, these were more “professional” jobs, and sounds like you’re looking for “lower-skilled” technicians, which may have different subtleties. Another option is apprenticeship-like arrangements (on-the-job training + paying for technical school), depending on the industry/trade.

    If people don’t care to have work ethic, show up on time, etc, it’s usually because they feel like they’re being shafted, and have horrible, non-inspiring management, so they feel they owe the company nothing. If people feel like they’re working for a company, instead of with a company that’s helping them “self-actualize” or whatever, you get the “companies pay just enough so their workers don’t quit, employees work just hard enough to not get fired,” attitude.


  • “Slow” in what way? I, and a few other people have been using it as a replacement to Slack for the past 6 months, and haven’t noticed it being slow. We’re just using the matrix.org server. Only downsides I’ve seen is it doesn’t have all the features Slack does (but I have never used them anyways), and search sucks (which is understandable because it’s encrypted).


  • If I use a private window, and don’t log in I get a lot of right-wing stuff. I’ve noticed it probably depends on IP/location as well. If at work, youtube seems recommend me things other people at the office listen to.

    If I’m logged in, I only get occasional right-wing recommendations interspersed with the left-wing stuff I typically like. About 1/20 videos are right-wing.

    YouTube Shorts is different. It’s almost all thirst-traps and right-wing, hustle culture stuff for me.

    It could also be because a lot of the people who watch the same videos you do tend to also watch right-wing stuff.

    In general, the algorithm tries to boost the stuff that maximizes “engagement,” which is usually outrage-type stuff.




  • “If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar’s own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.”

    • Eben Moglen

    I think imposing artificial scarcity on art, information, and tools; and rationing based on those with the ability to pay is immoral. I mean sure, most art that people pirate is just empty entertainment. But imposing artificial scarcity on tools (software such as OSs, CAD, productivity software, etc), news, and academic papers behind expensive licenses that many cannot afford to pay is objectively immoral. If piracy did not exist, I am positive the world would be without many of the technological advances we have today.