[–] 2 points 6 months ago

What these people do is they take something that's vaguely true or at least has a kernel of truth in it and they give it the most sensationalistic and negative spin possible. So it can't be "there were upsides and downsides to the switchover from incandescent bulbs", it has to be "the greatest uglification in history", and anyone who points out the energy saving advantages of LEDs and fluorescent lightbulbs is just trying to Silence You and smear you. It's so wretched.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I knew some people who lived in Switzerland for a bit and they joked that it was a libertarian paradise because you can drink and smoke when you're a teenager, the age of consent is 16 and everyone is issued a gun as part of their military service. I didn't expect anyone to take it seriously....

    Afaik Switzerland does have a unique system of federated democratic governance, one of the oldest democratic systems in Europe. The downside is that women weren't able to vote in some Swiss cantons until the 90s.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    Fire accidents seem to have the unique combination of producing extremely strong emotional responses by people in a local community, while also often being traceable to an o-ring like failure that you can over-index on.

    Gee, why would people get emotional about friends and family being burnt alive. How bizarre.

    Also I am not a fire expert by any means whatsoever and maybe I'm missing this guy's point. But pretty much every account I have ever read of a fire that killed a lot of people is like "the building did not meet fire safety standards and the management had been dodging calls from the fire safety inspectors. Multiple people said the building was unsafe. On the night the fire happened the fire exits were chained shut." Like, read about this horrendous fire that happened near where I live. There is no need to bring up o-rings. Fires in residential buildings and entertainment venues are not the same as fires on NASA spaceships.

    Also fire codes do not control the size of fire engines. That's a bad decision made by firefighters.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I don’t blame people for not understanding the complexities of a global economy that makes it possible to buy a nearly-magic artifact that no human alive can create on their own for just 16 cents.[1] It feels like there is a certain amount of Stuff in the world, and so if some people have a lot of Stuff that’s only possible because others have much less Stuff, and that’s unfair. If life is hard, it’s the fault of the people who took all the Stuff.

    What a cunt.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago*

    The problem for them is that the cops are actually the army of the rich and state and national government is controlled by billionaire lickers. They could go to DSA meetings and picket, but at best they could get a DSA member to be rude to them and then complain about it.

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  •  

    God help us. These workers are employed by a subcontractor, Covalen.

    Multiple workers from Covalen’s ‘AI annotation’ service spoke to The Journal Investigates about their roles. Their day-to-day work involves creating prompts that are fed to Meta’s AI platform so the system can be trained according to guidelines.

    In order to do this, some workers have spent entire shifts pretending to be paedophiles online seeking child sex abuse related information, or suicidal people looking for details on how to kill or hurt themselves.

    Covalen also does moderation for Meta, with workers forced to watch extremely violent and disturbing footage that has been flagged for moderation.

    “Sometimes in my dreams I am the victim, but sometimes – and this is far worse – I am the perpetrator,” they said.

    One bright spot:

    Over 100 Covalen employees have now joined the Communications Workers Union (CWU). The toll that dealing with sensitive content and inconsistencies in wellness break length were extra motivating factors for the move.

    They are also asking for a better rate of pay, as they are currently earning an average of €29,700 per year.

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