Found the advertising executive guys!

Health, Financial and Education are some of the worst sectors to work in IT for differing reasons. (And usually, DON’T give a salary to match)

Health, because if something breaks people might just not be able to work, people might die. And regulatory environment.

Financial, just sucks because of the regulatory environment and banks are some of the worst offenders of “IT is just a cost center”

Education, (Well funded colleges/universities might be different) because of lack of funding and annoying bureaucracy

I’ve worked in 2 of the 3 (education and financial) in IT and they SUCKED, but probably would have been a bit better if I had a good paycheck to match the suckiness.

I will never work any of those three again.

Yea but that’s media media, this thread is about User Generated Media

dominate any general audience English speaking online community

China, India, Africa and others will probably develop to the point of “producing as much media as the USA”, but I highly doubt they’ll simultaneously make a major shift to English for it

Tariffs can be good when applied in limited, researched and balanced ways. Trump’s “plan” is to just apply a 60% blanket tariff, which is what’s really really bad.

That’s great, in theory. In reality, you’ll get stuck in a perpetual savings cycle like OP and in many cases never reach the mythical threshold.

200k savings sounds nice, but if you have to spend 5 years saving and housing prices jump 80, 90, 200% in that time that savings lead gets entirely erased.

You can always play around with your interest rate later on, but you can never change what you paid for the house

Real talk, forget about a down payment. There are a bunch of different ways to get a 0 down mortgage with varying qualifiers so that chances you qualify for one of them is quite decent.

Even if not, there are still a bunch of other ways to get low down payment mortgages for ~3% down or less.

Toss out the old adage of “20% down or bust” and keep any money saved towards it for savings for all the other costs of home/closing

The day he said that “ReGULAr CAmErAs aRe ALl YoU NeEd” was the day I lost all trust in their implementation. And I’m someone who’s completely ready to turn over all my driving to an autopilot lol

Yea this was the last email I got…a promise for another email…5 days ago

Fuck yo Zip Drives, all my homies use SyQuest

“The people of Ukraine didn’t choose that path, the oligarchs did.”

It’s true Ukraine has a history of oligarchic influence, but the 2014 Maidan protests were a massive, popular uprising. Ukrainians were fed up with Yanukovych’s corruption and his decision to abandon the EU agreement for closer ties with Russia. This wasn’t just oligarchs pulling strings; millions of Ukrainians demonstrated for a future that aligned with Europe, seeking more autonomy from Russia.

“Russia would be imperialist, but isn’t right now.”

I would argue that Russia is acting imperialistically. The annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, and now the invasion of Ukraine are clear examples of Russia asserting control over its neighbors. Even if it’s not globally imperialist like the U.S., these actions align with a regional imperialism that Marxists should still oppose.

Ultimately, this isn’t about picking sides between oligarchies, but supporting the principle of self-determination for Ukraine, including resisting imperialist aggression from any direction.

Yes, Ukraine has ties with the U.S., but sovereign nations have the right to choose their alliances. Ukraine’s Western integration stems from its desire for self-determination, not just U.S. influence. Russia’s aggression isn’t justified merely because Ukraine sought NATO’s support.

Bias exists everywhere, but dismissing “Western” sources wholesale, while elevating openly ideological ones, doesn’t strengthen the argument. Marxist critique should apply equally to all capitalist states, including Russia, which operates under an oligarchic system that exploits its own people. 1 2

While far-right elements in Ukraine are real, they’re a small part of the picture. Reducing Ukraine to these groups oversimplifies the conflict. Most Ukrainians are fighting for sovereignty, not fascism.

Russia’s actions are imperialist too, and as a Marxist, you should critique imperialism wherever it emerges, not just from the West.

1. NATO Expansion: The argument that NATO’s eastward expansion “provoked” Russia is often linked to Gorbachev’s 1990 talks with Western leaders. However, this promise was tied to Germany’s unification, not a blanket prohibition on expansion. And importantly eastern european countries sought NATO membership because of their historical (and justified) fears of Russian imperialism (a dynamic Marxists should understand as nations seeking sovereignty free from external dominance.)

2. Western Involvement in Ukraine: The U.S. supporting a regime change in Ukraine in 2014 is thought to be imperialism. But ignores the agency of Ukrainians, who led the Maidan protests because of already existing deep dissatisfaction with Yanukovych’s corrupt, oligarchic regime and his pivot to Russia. Supporting popular uprisings against oligarchs should align with Marxist values even if “the West” has its own interests

3. The Role of Fascism in Ukraine: Yes, Ukraine has issues with far-right groups like so many countries but exaggerating their influence as a justification for invasion serves to divert attention from Russia’s own reactionary politics. Far-right elements in Ukraine do not define the country’s political landscape, nor do they justify imperial aggression from another state. Russia has its own history of fostering right-wing authoritarianism.

4. Minsk Agreements: While the West" and Ukraine could be criticized for their handling of the Minsk agreements, Russia also violated these accords by continuing support for the separatists. Both sides share blame for the failure of Minsk, but it doesn’t make Russia’s invasion justified. Ukrainians didn’t provoke a full-scale invasion; they were defending their sovereignty.

5. NATO as a “Defensive” Alliance: Criticism of NATO’s imperialistic behavior is fair its actions in places like Libya show it isn’t 100% defensive. But in this case, NATO’s expansion was driven by countries seeking security from a historically imperialist power. Ukraine wasn’t “provoking” Russia by wanting self-determination; it was trying to secure its future.

You’re trying to push this “Actuall, but Ukraine DID provoke” narrative by mixing in unverified, ideologically biased material with references that are legitimate, but isolated incidents. Like linking far-right activity to justify the war conveniently ignores Russia’s (I should probably say everyone’s) own far-right issues. Marxists should reject imperialism in all its forms, including Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

“propaganda”? Oh. You mean like Russia started a full blown unprovoked war with a peaceful nation? That “propaganda”?

Sucks others got caught in the crosshairs, but that’s just what happens when your authoritarian government launches unprovoked wars and gets sanctioned.

Who are you to dictate who needs what? I definitely “need” a smart fridge from my example because I always forget to make a list before I go to the grocery store. It would save me so much time and money.

You honestly sound like the old fucks of ancient times past who always bitched about new “tech”:

• Damn smartphones, ruining society
• Damn internet, ruining society
• Damn personal computers, ruining society
• Damn video games, ruining society
• Damn television, ruining society
• Damn comic books, ruining society
• Damn rock and roll music, ruining society
• Damn jazz music, ruining society
• Damn movies, ruining society
• Damn automobiles, ruining society
• Damn telephones, ruining society
• Damn electricity, ruining society
• Damn novels, ruining society
• Damn newspapers, ruining society
• Damn printing press, ruining society
• Damn written language, ruining society
• Damn iron tools, ruining society
• Damn bronze weapons, ruining society
• Damn agriculture, ruining society
• Damn fire, ruining society

Nothing is stopping you from running away into the mountains to life a tech free life

Are you mad about the technology or the underlying reasons it was born of? Honestly most people’s anger towards tech isn’t about the tech itself, but what it’s really used for

For example, the smart fridge, on paper most people would find it a fantastic idea. But then the user-hostile features set in. An internal camera could helpfully analyze everything in your fridge and put together an ez shopping list, but then in reality we kinda get that because it was designed around things like selling data collection and ADs and then designed to break in a year or 2 and take out half the fridge along with it because they want to make more money off you every 2 years

Now take the smart fridge in a world with strong privacy and consumer protection laws (and maybe even a capitalism free world) and it would be totally different, not only would you get cool things designed properly with heart and soul, but it’ll also last a long time. Modern tech doesn’t have to be as fragile as it is, NASAs space probes and rovers and satellites prove time and time again that “High Tech” can last with proper design and manufacturing. In the depths of space their shit is routinely lasting their original mission lengths. In space, in the top 10 most hostile places we know.

Am I missing something? I can’t even find anywhere to download apks lol

Also note that there is no single instance that is not defederated from something or another

I mean, you could run a personal instance that’s completely open lol

I had Crapcast for awhile before fiber became available, I regularly use terabytes of data and their 1TB cap would be blown through in no time.

If data caps actually solved a problem like it does for cellular networks, it’d be different. But it’s not, it’s a cash grab, I “just” had to pay Crapcast an extra 20$/month

You see, for cellular, a tower is truly limited on the bandwidth because it must be shared among all cellular devices connected to it. And that could be thousands upon thousands of individual devices.

But for hardline, the ISP builds a trunk to the neighborhood and they build it to spec assuming they would sign up a certain percentage (Probably like 80%, or more if they know they’re going to be the only service for a while) to their highest tier. If their highest tier is 1Gbps, then they build their trunk line to that neighborhood to handle 80% of the houses having 1Gbps service.

They never get close to that percentage in the real world, most people are going to stick with some middle of the road package or slower. But, the trunk was built to handle 80% of the houses being active 24/7 at 1Gbps, which just doesn’t happen in the real world so a LOT of that capacity remains just at the ready.

Now that’s just bandwidth, has nothing to do with the amount of data transferred, that line to your house is built to handle whatever the ISPs highest package is or planned higher, whether you use 1Gbps to transfer 1 GB of data or 1000 it doesn’t matter

I’d say that’s more to do with dropping stigma leading to better/more reporting rather than smartphones being some major cause of mental health issues. I’m sure they do cause some issues, but probably not much more than any other vice