That you need to wash your hands after going to the bathroom. I’ve seen too many grown men walk straight out of the restroom after urinating.
Do you really wash your hands, or, do your hands wash each other while you watch?
Listen, ‘Stoner Rick’… not everything you think and say is mindblown, earth-shaking facts or perspectives. And this is coming for a dude who used to get high and once thought that I and my friends (who were not high,) were in an atom accelerator going down the highway. My mind was blown away but everyone in the car thought It was a dumb thing to say.
After COVID this is the only way I greet anyone.
Family gatherings get a little awkward.
I mean… I’m not totally against this.
Imagine non sexual genital touching.
Every time I see one of those “employees must wash hands” signs, I think about getting some custom made “and everyone else should too” signs made up to start posting below them in public bathrooms everywhere I go.
I wish it was only after urinating that I’d seen my fellow man just walk straight out of the toilet, beyond disgusting.
Trans woman here, I’ve seen both sides.
A small percentage of the men’s room washes their hands and a small percentage of the women’s room DOESN’T wash their hands. It’s a night and day difference.
A small percentage of the men’s room washes their hands
Not my experience. Where have you seen this?
I mean, decades of using one? And the mockery I received by men I got for washing my own hands? I have had family members and numerous classmates tell me that washing your hands is just admitting you peed on them.
Of course my experiences are anctedotal, but for me, it was a quite noticeable difference when I started using the ladies room. I’m not trying to make a definitive statement, absolutely there are men who do reguarly wash their hands, but there is also a very large majority of men who don’t. From my experience, that’s not the case with people in the women’s room.
That’s wild. Maybe I’m not observant but I haven’t ever seen someone leave the bathroom without washing their hands
I mean, decades of using one?
I said where. What part of the world do you live in? I’ve lived mostly in the USA, and most of the public bathrooms I’ve used have been at restaurants, museums, bars, and gyms.
In those places, it’s rare to see a man leave the bathroom without washing his hands.
So where did you see that?
US, lived mostly up and down the west coast.
restaurants, museums, bars, and gyms.
And these are literally the examples I would’ve given. To be fair, it’s been years since I’ve been in a mens room. But, I know it’s common for most guys to walk straight out.
Is this the real reason why we have longer lines in the bathroom? In addition to having to finagle several layers just to pee?
This grosses me out so much. Some men claim they don’t want to get germs on their penis, and that’s their justification. Just walk straight from the urinal snd leave, or they laughably just splash some water on their hands and leave calling it a day. So fucking gross.
I’d love to tell those men just how many droplets of urine bounce from the urinal and directly onto the front of their pants, lower shirt, on their arms, and all over their hands and penis. That shit ain’t clean, and you’re putting urine droplets on your face, eyes, and mouth less than 30 minutes later.
Fucking disgusting.
Farside_Didnt_Wash_Hands_Comic.PNG
Some men claim they don’t want to get germs on their penis
How does that make any sense? What… how… I just… ?! Do they believe one washes their hands BEFORE peeing? Well OK, let’s imagine that, then then would have… cleaner hands so… less germs? Do they imagine that one “reverse wash” theirs hands before? Like… rubbing their hands on the floor itself THEN pee? It makes absolutely 0 sense. I don’t get any of it.
Im thinking they unzip, pull underwear out of the way, amd piss hands free?
Ohhh… that actually makes sense, thanks!
they must keep a pair of tongs handy.
Don King had an alternative thesis:
https://youtu.be/o4qo161MRNE?feature=shared
You should probably do it twice, before and after. Just to be on the safe side.
In the very first episode of House M.D. we establish that House washes both before and after.
We then watch him go to the bathroom at least a dozen times throughout the series, and not once does he wash before. Worst. Series. Ever.
I’m not interested in getting your ‘pickle juice’ on my hands. I don’t care if you washed your hands before. ‘Pickle juice’ splashback happens when you’ve got your hand down there. So wash after the fact, Jack.
Same here. Was out with my mother and brother once, went to a fast food restaurant, grabbed some shakes. Well, we happened to go inside and use the restroom, and so did an employee.
My brother witnessed that the employee did not wash his hands, annnnnd they made our shakes.
We didn’t want to make a scene, we just didn’t drink them, fuck that shit.
Eh i know people who drink their own urine, I’m not that worried about pee. I don’t want to drink my own pee, let alone a stranger’s pee, but I’m more concerned about the shit in shit when taking about hand washing.
What % of kitchen sponges in the US were found to contain fecal matter? I don’t remember, but it was high enough for me to switch to Swedish dish clothes immediately. Eurgh.
Eh i know people who drink their own urine,
Who are these people?
A whole bunch of friends from the town I used to live in. One started peeing on his skin as an eczema treatment, which seemed to work, and somehow this progressed to drinking it. It spread, and became a thing in town. Last I heard there were about 10 pee drinkers, but obviously it’s not something people talk about openly.
Apparently morning pee is relaxing because of the melatonin content?
Edit: Apparently it’s a very old and widespread practice. Here’s a Healthline article on it: https://www.healthline.com/health/drinking-urine
Well, urine is sterile, and if only touch the door in and out of the bathroom, washing doesn’t always seem necessary. If you get pee on your hands, then by all means. But if the only option is air blades for hand drying, you’re better off not washing. Those literally lace your hands in fecal matter when used in a public restroom.
urine is sterile
Not by the time it exits your body, no. Urine is sterile when it leaves the bladder, but it picks up bacteria on its way through the urethra
I bet you also refused to use masks because you couldn’t breathe.
I told folks to start buying masks in March 2020 and found a new gig as the one I had didn’t enforce any mask requirements. But I’m also a backpacker who knows bacteria and the immune system pretty well. I don’t read much research on urine, so again, please forgive that oversight. But funny how people aren’t easily categorized, ah?
So you only trust science sometimes? There are contradictions on whether air dryers are more or less hygienic than paper towels. But there’s no contradictions on whether you should wash your hands.
This study from the American Society of Microbiology specifically demonstrates how air driers at least add 3 bacterial colonies, and up to 254 colonies, when using an air drier in a public restroom: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aem.00044-18. In addition, a Harvard review of the research also identifies that the chances of picking up a serious pathogen in the bathroom are quite small.
So, having little chance in general yet using the air drier, which has shown to add bacteria to your hands in every single test, doesn’t make sense after understanding this data. I’m a man of science, and this involves assessing all available data regarding the topic at hand. This being the case, the data provided above highlights how just not touching your face and washing your hands at the next opportunity after leaving a bathroom with only hand driers is the most logical move. But to each their own, I know microbiologist and virologist who are much smarter than I that refuse to use air driers, so I took note and make moves accordingly.
There are two important quotes I would like to point out from that paper:
It is certainly clear that hand washing can reduce the risk of infections (39). However, the deposition of potentially pathogenic bacteria on the hands after hand washing to remove transient floras reduces the effectiveness of hand washing
Note the wording: “reduces effectiveness” means you should still do it, it is still effective, just less so.
These results did not differ significantly from those for bacterial colonies deposited by hand dryers from the same bathrooms when calculations of the colonies deposited by hand dryers and small fans were corrected for the times for air exposure and rates of airflow from these two sources
In other words: moving the air around is the cause, so a bathroom with paper towels that also has an air conditioner or fan will produce similar results. You know what else moves air around similar to a small fan? You when walking around, your hands are moving air and contacting lots of it.
I could reply with a study that finds air dryers to be safer and filter more bacteria, and we could go back and forth until one of us grows tired. Instead I’ll leave you with a review of several papers published on the matter where you can see that it’s not so clear cut, there is discussion around it and it doesn’t help that the vast majority of papers out there are financed by either paper companies or air drying companies (btw, kudos for citing one of the independently financed studies)
https://academic.oup.com/jambio/article/130/1/25/6726080
If you don’t want to read this, the long story short is that we don’t have enough evidence to conclude whether they are more or less hygienic:
The second question we sought to answer is ‘Are PT safer than hand dryers relative to human infection risks?’ We found no data to support any human health claims relative to hand dryers vs PT use.
And finally I leave you with another quote from this paper:
Of notable importance is the need to evaluate risks from hand‐drying activities in consideration of handwashing scenarios, given that the greatest uncertainty in hand contamination is associated with the handwashing method, and not the drying method.
In short: not washing your hands is worse than any drying method.
That chiropractic care is not evidence based
For people who don’t know, the theory of chiropractics is that the light of God somehow shines into the human body through the top of the head, travels down the spine, and on through the nerves. If you can just fix any blockages (aka “subluxations”) in that flow then it will be impossible for disease to exist in the body. Because God’s light.
The founder of chiropractics was told this information by a ghost.
I know some people swear by chiropractic adjustments, but this is information I wish I’d known when I had my back injury because going to a chiropractor set my recovery back by at least three years. And the money I lost to that quack could have paid for not only the legit physical therapist that actually got me feeling better, but probably a decent massage chair too.
Wow, I knew chiropractors were quacks, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Thanks for sharing this; I’m sorry that you didn’t have this information when you most needed it.
I’ve never heard a chiropractor say that. How do I know what you just claimed about that field isn’t misinformation?
From the Wikipedia article:
“Early chiropractors believed that all disease was caused by interruptions in the flow of innate intelligence, a vitalistic nervous energy or life force that represented God’s presence in man; chiropractic leaders often invoked religious imagery and moral traditions. D. D. Palmer said he ‘received chiropractic from the other world’. D. D. and B. J. [Palmer] both seriously considered declaring chiropractic a religion, which might have provided legal protection under the U.S. constitution, but decided against it partly to avoid confusion with Christian Science.”*
Why would a chiropractor tell you that? Nobody selling you a quack remedy is going to just come out and tell you it’s quack remedy. That’s rule #1 of selling quack remedies. But the history of chiropractics isn’t a secret, Neither are the statistics on vertebral artery dissection and other injuries caused by chiropractic adjustments. But look, I’m not your mommy. You don’t have to believe me, and you’re free to go do what you feel. It’s your own neck you’re risking.
The stuff they do that works is stuff that a physiotherapist will do, just go see the expert.
My chiro has all his training in physiotherapy. So is he a quack or is he a pro? I’m so confused!
If he was a certified physiotherapist then he would work as a physio I can guarantee that.
I think you’ve just reconciled two things:
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Internet always says chiropractors are quacks
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Multiple reasonable people IRL have praised their own chiropractors
Someone can praise their chiropractor, in the end that’s anecdotal and then I could point to all the people that have become paralyzed due to chiros.
All of them are quacks because most of what they do to people is bullshit and potentially harmful, it just happens that they sometimes also do some things that are actually ok but it’s methods employed by an actual medical field.
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Depends on what you mean by that. PTs can use chiropractic techniques to great effect.
But there is a MASSIVE difference between an actual PT that sometimes uses specific chiropractic techniques and the con artists who try to shake your down for weekly neck cracks.
I thought PT was chiropractic.
PT is evidence based, chiropracty is woo. PT goal is to get you better and stop PT or teach you how to do it on your own. Chiropractors want you to come back for the rest of your life.
I’ve been cracking my own neck and back since I was 14/15, never had to pay for fake doctors
You cannot achieve any good by hurting people.
People are so convinced that if we’re more cruel to criminals, they’ll stop committing crimes, or if we’re harsher to workers, we’ll work harder, or if you’re tough on border controls, immigrants will go away. It does not work and it cannot work.
Idk, if someone’s trying to do a mass shooting, a little intervention could do some good.
Less good than helping the shooter before they went over the Rubicon…I think that’s the point.
That’s entirely fair.
Alright but there are people who currently exist who are already over the Rubicon. Ideal future utopias aside, force must be met with force.
This is a fair point, as far as it goes, and I’m happy to accept ‘mass shooters curently engaged in a mass shooting’ as an exception to the rule!
Sadly, it often works for personal profits.
To quote a theorem from one of my engineering courses:
An optimized system can consist only of optimized subsystems.
This means any time you’re preparing to make something small worse, for the global good, it’s a mathematical fact you’re about to do the wrong thing.
What about eliminating nazis?
killing nazis makes the ones you weren’t able to kill more steadfast in their beliefs, (so it becomes harder to make them stop being nazis without killing them) and it makes it easier for them to convert others into becoming nazis (such as using it as ‘proof’ that they are oppressed)
Well, (my vegetarian friend’s least favourite dumb philosophical question:) Is Death Even Actually Painful?
Is Death Even Actually Painful?
Isn’t that more of a scientific question?
Unless they’re cops. Just get rid of those.
I’d argue that cops existing also counts as “doing harm” to the people who would be cops. I remember a while back when I learned about how cops are trained (stuff that causes them to see everyone as a potential criminal who wants to kill them), I felt profoundly sad because as well as the harm that the cops cause as a result of this, it also just seems like a terrible way to live. I honestly feel sorry for cops
The current system of getting a job is horrifyingly toxic, broken and inefficienct
The problem with some bad systems is that people recognize the system as bad, but can’t create a better system.
What would a better system look like?
For one, I think that you should be told when you’re rejected from a job. The uncertainty of waiting is one of the worst parts of job hunting in my opinion, and it’s made worse by the fact I can’t just assume that if I haven’t heard anything, I haven’t got the job, because some places have hiring processes that seem to last for months. I get that if you’re offered a job months down the line, they probably hired someone else, fired them and are now moving down their list of next best candidates, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to keep people in the dark for so long.
Agreed. A few places have an online portal where you can see the status of your application but they are few and far between.
For one thing, people would only apply to a few places, with requirements that closely matched their skills.
I feel like right now the dating and hiring and job hunting experience is all based on getting enough volume to then get to pick from the potentials. Maybe if we were able to do a mutually agreed upon “we (dating, employer, job hunter) are going to be really honest, you can be honest too and let’s see if we’re a good match.” I think it would be slower, and initially scarier to have less volume, but maybe in the end it would get better quality matches all around.
What field of expertise are you applying for? What country are you applying from?
Computers, and US. But I’m not just basing it off my experience
All rich people became rich because people like you and me are paying more for services and things than they’re truly worth, which means we pretty much never get our money’s worth even when we feel like we do.
There are no good rich people.
Hours spent working is not the same as productivity.
Twice as many people assigned to a project does not double productivity either.
I could go on…
Did you know that nine women can deliver one baby in just one month?
Yes, and if 30 people can sing a symphony in 2 hours, imagine what 120 people could do.
One woman can deliver a baby in an hour, if she’s a doctor or a midwife.
Why couldn’t 9 women deliver a baby in one month? That’s perfectly reasonable. Put the baby in a vehicle. Drive. Maybe stop at some hotels or just sleep in the vehicle with all 9 women. Then eventually you reach your destination in 1 month. Deliver baby. Profit.
Yup! Gotta count for the amount of work done too. Probably several other factors too, like skill experience, and quality of work.
Edit: if this doesn’t get properly formatted, sorry think something may be weird with Eternity
*Lemmings. (I was going to use that as an answer to your post, but someone learning something new never gets me even the slightest bit miffed.)
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Most scam products like “power saver” plug-in modules for your home, fake ODB2 gas saver modules for cars or those little stickers for cell phones that are sold as “antenna boosters”. Also, anything that is marketed as a “detox” product will piss me off.
All of those products are actively being sold on Amazon, EBay and at some other major retailers or in malls. They are openly sold because people refuse to learn that magic does not exist.
Please. Stop buying these things.
I almost prefer lemons of Lemmy 🍋
I know what you mean. It’s like a stupidity tax. Being ignorant makes you fall for those kinds of products and schemes. Ignorance is expensive.
I’ve lived long enough, to learn that there is not just one stupidity tax. And like you said…“Being ignorant,” is more of a lifestyle than it is a bad habit(s) IMO.
And yet humanity invented this device that fits in your pocket and allows you to access unlimited knowledge. It’s sad, really.
Knowledge can only take us so far. It’s how ‘we’ use that knowledge, that matters the most. But be carful, as false information can, and has been passed off as knowledge. Knowledge: the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association
True, and as if that was not enough we now have to deal with LLM generated content feeding on misinformation and allucinated content generated by other LLMs.
That is going to get very annoying very fast.
No no, you don’t understand. They get rid of “toxins”.
… which toxins? Uh …
Haha, yeah, sorry about that. Came back to Lemmy last week, so I just came up with something. Almost went with “Lemmers”.
The scam products also tend to get me pissed as well, it’s so stupid and just downright low tbh.
The most stupid thing I have seen so far, the “Vehicle molecular de-icer”
Fedizens?
Kbin was a flop (at least in the direct sense), but Mbin and sometime Sublinks will be released allow federation with Mastodon and some other stuff, so this is more inclusive.
Also Leftist Lemmies may become a thing, bc of all that about the origin of the code and supporting genocide in China (and sometimes Russia), so Fedizen avoids that?
Are we… (Star Trek) Fedizens ✨? Learned (Loony?) Lemmites? We’ll decide at some point. :-P
Many instances have already adopted the lemming as a mascot, like my home instance:
Still though, you do you. I got no complaints about what people want to call things. ;)
Well I am not in charge, but I did think I’d offer that thought for consideration, as it offers greater inclusivity. :-)
Perpetual growth in a finite system is impossible, and anything that relies on perpetual growth to function is doomed to eventually fail.
For instance: social services that rely on perpetual population growth (especially youth population; e.g. Japan/South Korea), companies that rely on perpetual increase in users (most publicly-owned companies; e g. basically every social media company ATM), industries that rely on perpetual advancements in technology (e.g. industrialized agriculture, which constantly needs new ways to fight self-induced problems like soil depletion and erosion), housing as wealth generation (to be a wealth generator it has to outpace inflation, but at a certain point no one will be able to afford to purchase houses at their inflated prices no matter how over-leveraged they get; e.g. Canada). [Note that these are merely examples where these issues are currently coming to a head; they are by no means special cases, they’re just in a more advanced state of “finding out.”]
In other words, a lot of the modern world, in both public and private sectors, is built around a series of ponzi schemes.
The left lane is for passing. If you’re not passing somebody, move over to the right lane. It’s not that hard people
Left lane… on the highway maybe. In the city it is definitely usable for navigation purposes, getting to the intended destination.
In the city it is definitely usable for navigation purposes, getting to the intended destination.
So is the right lane. If you’re driving the same speed as the car in front of you, you have no reason to use the left lane. Unless you’re making a left turn. Right?
Exactly my point, yes. Both/all lanes should be for navigational purposes in most cases in the city. 👍
Wrong. In cities left lane is for through traffic unless there are 3+ lanes then it’s the center.
Source: me CDL holder and trained driver. Training specifically went over this point.
Hm, that makes sense. My mistake. Doesn’t change my actual point but thanks for the info. Substitute passing lane for left lane and that’s what I meant.
I dont agree, I use the left lane frequently to not have a car in front of me. Increases visibility and security a lot, and just gives a nice feeling of not being blocked.
I do drive a bit faster than cars in the right lane almost always though.
Sure, I do the same thing sometimes. But I also pay attention and move to the right when I see someone catching me from behind. And I especially don’t drive at the exact same speed, side-by-side with the car in the right lane. And yet I see other drivers do that constantly.
Some people seem to think of it like a moral crusade or a pissing contest and they feel emasculated if another vehicle passes them. The sociology of automobiles and traffic is endlessly fascinating to me, although I often forget my intellectual curiosity when I’m actually driving 😅
See this is a sensible response to people getting unreasonably PO’d about this. You drive in “the left” (whatever that means to your relative position) until someone faster comes along and they can’t move more left than you.
I get upset when some fuckwit is going 15+ over the flow of traffic and then that fuckwit gets pissed when he runs up on someone’s ass expecting them to be aware of every dangerous fuckwit out there.
It is better to have angry drivers behind you?
No I drive fast enough to never have cars behind me. :) So Im actually not part of the problem the thread was discussing, with drivers just driving the same speed in the left lane. That is really frustrating when people do that.
I would go as far as saying that this behavior of driving faster in the left lane helps to make traffic flow a lot better and avoid congestion. But it’s not legal.
If you’re driving the same speed as the car in front of you, you have no reason to use the left lane
What if the car in front of you is driving at the same speed but heading right at you? Or if there is an angry T-Rex in the right lane?
Idk man. That’s above my pay grade.
Ok, I’ll come clean, I’m actually an angry T-Rex that drives on the wrong side of the road. I’m just looking for validation
T-Rexes were the first victims of Thalidomide, you could probably sue for compensation.
Do you drive a Model-T?
Nah, if it’s in the city (or in a small town with 4 lane roads and low speed limits), you’ll see semis use the left lane for the same reason I do: the right lane stops a lot due to right turns.
That’s fine. That means you’re passing the cars in the right lane that are slowing to make a turn.
Then the left lane stops prerry much every time someone needs to make an uprotected left.
I find this scenario extremely rare as in most cases I’m envisioning, there is a middle turn lane separating the two opposite lanes. Either from a light or just as a buffer between the flows of traffic.
This is all to say, there aren’t any hard and fast rules and there are too many scenarios to cover with a blanket statement like “The left lane is for passing. If you’re not passing somebody, move over to the right lane. It’s not that hard people” (comment above).
victorz said it more succinctly below.
If I’m going straight, or right eventually, I wouldn’t use the left lane to pass people when driving in the city. That’s just lane surfing and not very safe driving.
I don’t think it’s lane surfing if you’re not changing lanes. Anyway, this comment section has made me realize that it always just depends. Drive aware, keep safe distance, don’t unnecessarily change lanes, let people pass (on the left) if they’re going faster than you, etc.
The best advice I ever got about driving was “be predictable.” I think if anyone really takes that to heart empathetically then it would be safer.
I don’t think it’s lane surfing if you’re not changing lanes.
No, definitely not. It’s only lane surfing if you’re changing lanes to pass. Sorry, I thought that was the implication.
Anyway, this comment section has made me realize that it always just depends. Drive aware, keep safe distance, don’t unnecessarily change lanes, let people pass (on the left) if they’re going faster than you, etc.
Yes, agree completely. ❤️
The best advice I ever got about driving was “be predictable.” I think if anyone really takes that to heart empathetically then it would be safer.
Exactly. That person understands traffic. So many times people will decelerate very rapidly to stop and give way for me (because it’s a place where they are supposed to). But because they are coming at such speed, it doesn’t look like they’ll stop in time and it makes me react by breaking suddenly.
People need to look far, and break early and slowly. Be predictable and have clear car body language.
👌👌 You and I are on the same page.
Depends on which country…
And if you’re on a highway, and if that highway has left-lane exits or turns.
The passing lane* is for passing.
I actually like it better that way because it emphasizes how obvious it is. When I visited the UK and rented a car, I actually found that drivers were far more courteous and self-aware compared to the US.
Holy shit. Remind me never to drive in the US if we are an example of courtesy and self-awareness.
The US is really big, but the Northeast megapolis is a bit of a nightmare when it comes to driving etiquette.
I’m a relatively good driver (not the greatest) I’ll never understand how people don’t understand there’s more you can do to control your vehicle speed besides just hitting the gas then the brake. It’s terrifying seeing someone speed up on someone then hit the brakes ever every 3 seconds. I’ve had my set of brakes on for nearly 7 years I know people who change them yearly and I’m strictly talking about the ones I know for a fact get the same level of quality brakes that I get. I own a truck hauling stuff around nearly every day so in theory I should be going through brakes WAY more than the average person.
What frightens me is when you see a vehicle put on their brake lights while they are clearly accelerating. I tend to back way away from that type of driver.
I don’t understand ? brake lights light up when you brake ? how could you do both ?
In case you’re not being sarcastic, this is about 2-footed drivers. They tend to always have their left foot “resting” on the brake pedal “just in case.” What they ignore is there’s a small amount of movement in the brake pedal that will light up the lights but not engage the brakes. So even if they’re not just wearing down the brakes, they look like they’re braking ALL. THE TIME.
I also hate this.
wtf ? people drive with their left foot on the brakes ? no, I had no idea. I never ever heard of this
My brake lights were “sticky” when I first bought my car, husband noticed while driving behind me and accused me of riding the brake.
My car is a 6 speed manual. I couldn’t do that if I tried.
Back to the dealer, they figured it out and fixed it.
It means they are pushing on both the brake and accelerator at the same time. In essence, they are revving the engine, engaging the power train AND applying brake force to it all at the same time.
Drive with both feet.
If you only slightly press down your brakes you can easily overcome that by applying more gas.
IMO that happens extremely rarely though
and that kind of driving affects not just brakes, but gas, engine wear, etc. not to say how horrible the whole experience of being bumped back and forth is. it’s SO simple and really reflects how careless and ignorant people choose to be about almost everything, and then that makes me really irritated
Or the people who slow down at the bottom of a hill to accelerate UP HILL. Also all automatics you can shift to neutral and coast too.
“Homeopathic” does not mean organic, or good for you, natural, wholesome, effective, or inherently safe to consume.
It is, in fact, a code word for no active ingredient.
Capitalism is not working.
CapitalismDeregulation is not working.Capitalism Regulation does not work in the long term.
Explain, please.
Long-term, regulations are either bypassed or dismantled, or the regulatory agencies are captured. Either lead to the same cyclical result where in the euphoria/bubble state of capitalism, existing regulations are removed to allow the system to grow faster/higher, and once the economy inevitably busts and (poor people’s) lives are lost/ruined, then some regulations are added to “not let this happen again”. At least, until the next boom cycle begins. We’ve already seen this play out and we’re at the point where we can’t see it play out again as that will literally lead to a human-led mass extinction event.
“Regulatory capture” is one way that regulated capitalism can fail. Bring that, I’m not sure.
Oh, yes it is, and it’s working exactly as it’s meant to.
I’m still not sure about the following yet, but it seems to be accurate. ‘Unregulated’ capitalism is what the US has been dealing with for many, many years now. I look to the major countries in Europe to see what kind of economies they run, to help me understand what a better off country might look like. (Yes, most of them are part of the EU, and that itself brings Pros and Cons to singular economies.)
What do you mean by “working” in this context?
The end result of capitalism is slavery. The end result of anarchy is also slavery. The end result of socialism is… yup, also slavery. Basically humanity seems to enjoy slavery:-). :-(
Knowing this, it might have been good to have tried to work against that trend. However, we got too lazy, and/or greedy, and if you don’t fight against entropy then the natural state takes over.
Case in point: our level of technological progress is higher than it has ever been. We could feed the world. We won’t, but we could. And yet, food prices reflect… more similarity to slavery than to freedom of choice - what other food can I buy except the stuff that is twice as expensive as it was?
I can understand capitalism resulting in slavery, because it wants to minimize labor costs, so slavery is the logical conclusion (also, slavery is still used by capitalists). I don’t see anarchy resulting in slavery, because slavery is inherently hierarchical. I also don’t see socialism resulting in slavery because the workers own their means of production/businesses/workplaces.
Your answer refers to the theoretical outputs of each of those - in which case capitalism also likewise probably does not result in slavery either? That’s extremely highly debatable ofc and depends on whether we are talking about unregulated capitalism, which at that point might be better called anarchy, vs. a regulated form, which no longer produces actual slavery, bc of the regulations holding it back - and if the source of the regulations is a voting citizenry, then making it more akin to socialism even? (Bc despite the lack of direct ownership, they would have that indirect source of control - in theory at least.)
True anarchy does not produce slavery ofc. At least not in theoretical models, where once you enter a state you are never allowed to leave it. However, if you had a true anarchist state irl, then people would be free to do as they please. And since some people prefer to own slaves, therefore they would. And then more and more would, progressing through stages such as feudalistic warlords, which could no longer properly be called “anarchy” but it would bring us back to slavery at an institutional level (with peasants having no rights). Not just in theory but bc of actual practice in fact. Anarchy removes the institutional blockers to allow people to do as they wish, so seems to always be a temporary condition on the way towards something else that will last? Barring some external factors that can keep that going, like a small area in-between two large states that gets left alone so that it can be a buffer zone. Even a pirate kingdom will eventually become a feudal state with some people lording it over others, just bc they can (and bc their money or access to secret knowledge entices people to go along with it).
Outside of theory, irl I don’t know that “capitalism” can exist without regulations keeping it going. Otherwise big monkey take from little monkey, and vice versa, without something (regulations) keeping that in check, so that monkey must exchange goods and services for money rather than simply bc they can get away with it. And ofc even “regulations” seems a simple word, but it too will have its nuances like a whole spectrum of how many and what type there are - e.g. are they only ever applied to the poors, in which case trending towards slavery but not bc of “capitalism” and rather bc of “anarchy” i.e. the lack of control of anyone stopping the rich from doing whatever they want.
And similarly, how could socialism exist irl either, without regulations propping it up? At which point I’ll remind us that while regulated socialism doesn’t lead to slavery, neither does regulated capitalism? But yes, unregulated capitalism can lead to slavery, and by a similar process, how could unregulated socialism not do the same? Bc “unregulated” anything really means anarchy, whatever it used to be before it lost its regulatory abilities.
i.e. these terms - capitalism, socialism, and anarchy - do not refer to systems, or at least not stable ones over time i.e. especially referring to those existing irl, but rather processes, that must be sustained (or else systems that maintain those processes). Bc the entropic decay process will counterbalance any such irl process by allowing anarchy to creep in and therefore trend towards slavery, hence an equal and opposing force must be applied to halt that shift. This leads to such extremely ironic - laughably so - thoughts such as: is the USA somehow not capitalist enough to prevent slavery (e.g. landlords need to provide goods and services in exchange for money, rather than simply collect in return for nothing), which I say is ironic bc capitalism always trends towards anarchy, as money acts to corrupt. However the crucially important distinction, i.e. the reason I went into that tangent, is that it is the lack of capitalism there that was the direct cause of the slavery, the latter being due rather to the anarchy, even while at the same time we all know that capitalism will eventually trend towards anarchy overall, ironically not bc it is too strong but bc it is too weak to resist that inevitable slide into anarchy.
And then the caveat is that socialism is the same way: it too irl has to fight that slide into anarchy and thereby feudalism and slavery. Its corrupting influences may not be monetary and instead other forms of power but the underlying greed is the same. A regulated capitalism can avoid slavery, for a time until it succumbs to anarchy, and a regulated socialism can do the same, until it too succumbs to anarchy as well. Maybe if can last longer? We have yet to see such proof irl, but maybe? But ultimately they both lead to slavery, unless efforts are expended to prevent that, at which point we must be fair to the truth and say that neither causes slavery directly, at least not while they are still actively maintained and haven’t yet fallen into the anarchy state… but both have that pit of anarchy ready to swallow them up if not resisted, and yet irl both really do resist it, for a time as best they can.
How corporations use advertisements to influence how the media reports on their activities. Prime example is how BP ran all those “We’re Sorry” ads when they poisoned the Gulf of Mexico. They weren’t apologizing to the public. They were using the ads to pass bribes to the news agencies to make sure to give them soft coverage when they should have been ranking them over the coals.
LLMs are not general AI. They are not intelligent. They aren’t sentient. They don’t even really understand what they’re spitting out. They can’t even reliably do the 1 thing computers are typically very good at (computational math) because they are just putting sequences of nonsense (to them) characters together in the most likely order based on their training model.
When LLMs feel sentient or intelligent, that’s your brain playing a trick on you. We’re hard-wired to look for patterns and group things together based on those patterns. LLMs are human-speech prediction engines, so it’s tempting and natural to group them with the thing they’re emulating.
You can recharge your new iPhone in the microwave.
and hit Alt+F4 to toggle God Mode
Need more RAM? Just download it!
found myself some bootleg RAM on usenet, screw the system
