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[–] 6 points 1 year ago

the provide the email service and internet if you're fixing someone to use it.

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  • 28 comments in c/leopardsatemyface@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 60 points 1 year ago (17 children)

    It's criminal to be poor, obviously.

    Just like it's criminal to be brown or black.

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  • [+] -11 points 1 year ago (16 children)

    In America, even the poorest person can afford a device with cellular or WiFi access. I’m not contesting that society discriminates against the poor or non-Whites, but I don’t see the discrimination here. Anyone can have access to email.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Tell that to my 90 year old grandfather.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    There are plenty of 80 and 90 year old even 100-year-old people that have email addresses. Plenty of people that like to have that in their life. My mother is nearly 80 years old and she has an email address. What does h have anything to do with living in the modern world.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Name a reason your grandfather can’t afford what I’m talking about. Housing subsidies exist. Disability exists. Social security exists. Free phones exist. Hell, you exist. I help hundreds of people a week get access to benefits that are free to them, which help them live. It’s not a luxurious life, to be sure. But it’s a lot better than most poor people from other countries. And we all pay for it with our taxes. The real crime is that it should be paid for many times over with corporate taxes, for which there are loopholes.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Old people have lots of difficulty with technology. Not all of it is because they are luddites. They lose mental faculties as they get old and have trouble remembering how to do things. Their eyesight gets bad so they can’t read tiny screens. I’ve always felt that there is a market for bonded employees to provide tech concierge services for old folks that have difficulty navigating things in the modern world.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I help elderly clients too and I’m aware of all those problems. We get them aides that can facilitate their shortcomings when it comes to technology. Solutions are available; all it takes is the will to enact them. People here are being very pessimistic about what’s possible.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    To an extent I agree that we should find ways to lower barriers to tech for elderly citizens. I think that in this country the sad reality is that limited finances will be directed to other priorities like food and shelter. When disaster strikes then these vulnerabilities become clearly exposed.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    And to an extent, I agree that adding barriers to disaster victims is entirely unnecessary and counterproductive; I simply meant to point out that it’s not discrimination to expect people of virtually all stripes to be able to handle email access, at least in America. I’ve worked with people who have all varieties of disabilities. Only in extreme cases is it reasonable to expect a person to not be able to handle basic instructions that can help them circumvent technological barriers. If the blind can do it, what are we really talking about here? In my experience, it’s 9/10 times the lack of will, and that is probably the toughest barrier of them all.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Are you unaware that this administration is rapidly eliminating all those social safety nets you mentioned?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    No, I’m not, and I’m adamantly against it, but those nets are not yet completely dismantled, and the actions of this twat of a president do not disprove my overall point. America still has better safety nets than most countries in the world.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Come down to Appalachia, where vast areas have no cellular signal at all nor ISP available.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I can’t attest to that area’s WiFi access but if it’s as bead as you say, and what I’ve heard about people stubbornly continuing to live there is true too, then they have only themselves to blame. I’ve been poor and I know plenty of other people who’ve been broke at some point in their lives. There are always options in a nation as rich as America. They’re not always good ones, but you can chain them together into something better.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Why should they have to? Because of your opinion?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Why should they have to what? I don’t think anyone should have to do anything because of my opinion. Is that the best you’ve got when it comes to a counter argument? I don’t even know what you’re referring to. Come at me with better slop than this.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Ah, then the internet must be a utility right?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I don't get it, what's the actual face being eaten here and who does it belong to?

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  • [–] [S] 22 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Rural fucks vote for Republicans overwhelmingly. Rural folks are most likely to not be connected to the internet or have an email address. Republicans now require an email address for FEMA access.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    And even for those that do have email and internet access, rural America isn't exactly known for having robust infrastructure or government programs to respond to disasters, so they could quite likely find themselves unable to access their email in the aftermath of a disaster, anyway.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Honestly, that seems overly broad to me, since this doesn't seem like the result of any campaign plank that rural voters actually specifically supported, but fair enough. Thanks for the explanation.

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  • 16 comments in c/news@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 44 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I had zero electricity, cell signal, or any sort of communication service during and after Hurricane Beryl, and that wasn't even a strong hurricane. There was no power north of me for 11 days. How are you going to check email with nothing to power these devices?

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Modernizing communication makes perfect sense, but it should be an addition to improve flow of information, not a replacement that leaves some people behind for whatever reason. Most people would move to such a system willingly, freeing up resources for the older methods to work for those who need it. This sounds like a move to "accidentally" filter out certain demographics.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The post office should be modernized into a national ISP. It's not a huge conceptual leap to go from mail delivery to more broadly enabling communication in all forms.

    And postal banking too!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Great idea. Along with that we should sink some money into the digital infrastructure to make sure as much of the country is connected at the best possible level. Wait...we did that in, what, the 90s? Gave a lot of money to the companies of the time and...shit, where'd that money go?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Demographics like ancient boomers who don’t have email and always vote R?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Older people, or those who don't have access or aren't familiar to technology. Maybe even other situations I don't know about. Why wouldn't we offer help and a way to access that help to anyone? I don't care how they voted or who they are. I wish they'd come around to thinking differently, but they're still people.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    We would do those things of course. My point was that this dumbass administration seems intent on killing its own supporters.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    All I can say is the wisdom from George Carlin: "It's a Big Club, and you aren't in it." None of these people, Republicans or not, aren't either. They just haven't realized it, and may never.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    thankfully every citizen is guaranteed a permanent email address that can never be taken away by the state.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago*

    20 or so years ago I worked at Akamai for a while. They were one of the first, and at the time the largest CDN provider in the world. They have racks of networking gear in literally thousands of data centers around of the world.

    One day while still learning their systems I was digging through old tickets in their Network Operations Center and stumbled on one that was a few years old and still open. The initial message in the ticket was merely an automated message that a node at a Midwest ISP was down. There were a few comments by various Akamai folks who tried to remotely access the equipment, followed by attempts to reach the ISP by email and phone. None of that was successful.

    The last entry in the ticket was a statement that the ISP’s datacenter had been destroyed by a tornado.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    !leopardsatemyface@lemmy.world

    LOL you know this is going to affect red states way more...

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago