Gold standard at this point in time would be deflationary (if the population is growing faster than new gold is being mined, at least). Deflation incentivizes money hoarding, and disincentivizes loans and investments. Capitalism basically breaks down during times of deflation (investments dry up, people stop spending money on things they don’t absolutely need, companies lay off or go out of business, unemployment rises).

I don’t think DeSantis is charismatic or likable enough to beat Biden. His poll numbers go down as the public gets more exposure to him. He’s starting to shift his messaging from anti-woke to (neo-fascist) populist rhetoric, which may change things. IDK, there’s so many things that could happen between now and the election. I think Trump could beat DeSantis in the primary from prison. A major crisis like a recession would hand the election to the Reps. The Reps could intentionally cause a crisis, by forcing an extended government shutdown or something.

I always have. If that’s the reason, why wouldn’t you? It’s just business. Once, they’ve offered me a potentential promotion or salary increase to try to retain me (but not nearly as much as I got from the new job). I doubled my salary and got my title promoted twice in 2 years by switching employers twice. If I keep it up I’ll be a CEO in no-time, lol.

Rep voters =/= Rep politicians. I would say the ~27% of people that identify as Republican support fascist-like policies, even if they don’t think of them as fascist. The Rep party itself is definitely neo-fascist. They even use the same rhetoric as the Nazis and white nationalists (focusing on degeneracy, cultural marxism, great replacement theory, etc). Just this time, LBGT people and hispanic immigrants are the first scapegoats. The current 2nd favored Republican presidential candidate, behind Trump, is most definitely a neo-fascist by just looking at the policies he’s been implementing in Florida; not to mention his campaign sharing a video ad featuring DeSantis in the middle of a sonnegrad.

I haven’t had a filament LED fail on me yet. The cheapest LEDs you can find aren’t worth it; best to get a name brand.

Plants don’t need much, if any, green light (they reflect it). LEDs can be made to be full spectrum. I can think of no reason why anyone would want incandescent lights for plants. Even before cheap high power LEDs were a thing, people usually used high pressure sodium lights.

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.

It’s probably losing a lot of money and he despises what twitter was (spreading the “woke mind-virus”), so if he can’t make it a profitable Truth Social clone, he’s going to kill it to cut his losses (in a “meme-able” way).

Isn’t it important to keep tabs on what the obscenely powerful are up to? I.e. to try to hold them accountable, to be informed on what you’re protesting and criticizing, to prepare for what they’re going to do next that may affect you?

LOL. I watched that too yesterday. I don’t think the people he talked to were the most reliable narrators though. People have been claiming everyone else doesn’t want to work since the beginning of time :) Some of the people they were complaining about “collecting checks” sounded like they actually were disabled (seizures, anxiety, etc). Regardless, if you feel your choices in life are to work at a gas station for $7/hr and still need government assistance just to survive, or just collect a check, you’re going to choose the check. These people are broken by poverty, and believe they have no hope to lead successful, rewarding lives (which may or may not be true).

I have family that lived in some of those exact same towns. Sadly, most died very young (in their 20s) ) due to poverty/drugs/shit-life-syndrome.

Hmm. I can see that if meetings only take place every 2 weeks. We have daily meetings (agile), and pretty granular task/issue tracking, which are even more important for remote workers, IMO.

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.

Most leftists in the U.S. are democratic socialists, social democrats, are some flavor of anarchists; not authoritarian socialists… Most do not think violence is necessary, except for protection against the increasingly fascist right-wing. Many believe it’s possible to move closer to a socialist-like society by building mutual-aid networks and communities, and promoting candidates for government positions that align with their values; not through a violent revolution.

And yes, I would prefer systems closer to Scandinavian countries, which the right-wing here calls socialism. Ideally, I would like to see some kind of real socialism where the workers own the means of production (factories, stores, farms, etc) and controls it through democratic processes, not the investor-shareholders or the government. I think the term is anarcho-syndicalism, but I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.

I cannot imagine a system that would lead to more freedom, better education or innovation.

LOL.

Even though I acknowledge that other systems have been tried in the past, I also believe that all of them, except capitalism with a few social tweaks, have failed.

Capitalism fails every ~8 years requiring the use of vast amounts of public funds to keep afloat. I’d also say if fails daily if you look at all the needless suffering occuring in the world today, especially in the most “free market” countries and the countries these exploit. We have “socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else,” as Jon Stewart would say.

I’ve spent years working at a fossil-fuel-adjacent company, and I’ve noticed that even some intelligent people (consciously or unconsciously) avoid any information that that might make them think they may not being living a perfectly moral life, or information where the obvious solution goes against their “values” (pro-business, free market). They also grasp for any information that affirms their values and lifestyle, no matter how easily discredited the source.

It’s kinda worrying that it always seems to result in Nazi-like conspiracy theories like “the Agenda,” “Elites,” “groomers,” “cultural marxism,” etc.

“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.

I think a bigger problem is they demonetize and depromote any video discussing a controversial or kid-unfriendly topic. This affects the actual content.

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I think it’s just because “colored people” is an outdated term associated with more racist times. POC is “poeple first.” Many would argue that POC is also white-centric. I like the term “minority,” but I guess that isn’t skin-color specific.