Some of us go to concerts alone. It’s not that crazy to leave a single seat open.

Not that that should ever be the consumer’s problem anyway.

California is doing a hell of a lot better than any other state. That’s why it’s always people who don’t live here who want to say shit like this.

No state is perfect. This is the US after all. But major California cities are the best you’re going to get in terms of anything even resembling progressivism. If people who don’t live here or have never been here want to make the choice to believe conservative propaganda about homelessness when it’s a nationwide problem, or about crime when it’s decreased nationwide, then that’s their own problem.

nobody ever wants to pay for anything on the internet

To your point, maybe if what we got in return were worth a shit, people would be more willing to pay. But it gets shittier and shittier, more and more inundated with ads, worse journalism with more clickbait and AI, all for prices that go up every year to multiple times per year.

It was more reasonable when you could go to the store and pay for one newspaper or one issue of a magazine. Then if you really liked it you could subscribe. Now there’s no other option but to subscribe. Not everyone wants to be paying a bunch of separate subscription fees per month just to get decent news, and not everyone wants one hundred percent of a news outlets content. But we’re charged for it regardless. Fuck no, no one wants to pay for that.

Maybe if it were one of the only things that required a subscription. Like it used to be. But now, almost every single thing we use comes with a subscription charge and there’s usually no other way to pay for it. It’s all or nothing. And it gets totally exhausting, aggravating, and ridiculously expensive, especially when they force you to pay for a bunch of shit you don’t need, or they charge you cancellation fees on top of an extra month, or raise the monthly price without telling you, or tack on extra charges for shit that should just come with it in the first place, etc etc.

My point is, no one should defend the subscription model. If an outlet does good journalism, they’ll have donors. PBS Newshour, NPR, Democracy Now, they’re some of the best souces and they’re all nonprofit. And, what do you know, none of them have actual ads.

And shoutout to local libraries to loaning current magazine issues online. I get a Libby notification every time the New Yorker comes out. And I’m sure they’re losing a ton of money because I don’t personally pay for a subscription /s

Wasn’t Israel literally demolishing the homes of innocent Palestinian families, causing small children to become homeless overnight? Terrorist groups usually form in response to something. Like, I don’t know, an apartheid state killing them if they don’t leave their homes

I am so sick and tired of having two people standing right behind me staring over my shoulder as I’m using self checkout at walmart. It makes me never want to go back there. I actually have never “forgotten” to scan anything, ever. Yet these mfs are breathing down my neck at every store, every time I go. Target is the opposite. I swear these LPs (the plain clothes people but with walkies, come on) and workers are next to me at all times when I’m shopping. But then they usually leave me be at self checkout. I guess by then their ridiculously invasive theft monitoring system has determined I’m not a threat or something.

Fuck both of these companies. And fuck them even more for running every smaller company out of business so we have nowhere else to shop when we’re sick of being treated like criminals and sick of being sold garbage at some insane markup.

What a gross comment

And headlights that blind everyone around you

I am just saying that this burden shouldn’t fall on other people in material need.

Well, good thing it doesn’t in this case.

The whole point is that everything in this field is already, by default, directed at men. That’s what it’s like in the US. It’s the same with race. And saying we have have equality when we don’t is just ignoring the way these divisions affect historically oppressed groups. Acknowledging systemic hierarchy and division between races and genders in order to fix it doesn’t automatically mean you have to ignore class divisions. They’re far from mutually exclusive. Why would it be impossible to acknowledge both at the same time?

It’s to the point where no one else can have anything without men going “what about me and my problems?” “Well here’s what I think about all these social issues that have never and will never negatively affect me.” As usual, the “not all men” of every comment section of every article about a women-only-something-or-other are just making a great case for women-only-something-or-others.

this seems the completed detached thought of someone who never faced material difficulties.

Yes, all of your comments do.

Nobody really cared about the long term impacts of hurricane Katrina, and the rich just used it to privatize a bunch of shit, and then they got richer. I wish something like that would be enough to make people give a shit, but we’ve just been there before.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/naomi-klein-how-power-profits-from-disaster

Absolutely. There has to be some little glimmer of already wanting to quit for them to take the help seriously. I would absolutely recommend AlAnon as well. You can’t just force someone into treatment, and that’s pretty much what interventions try to do, on top of making the person feel guilt and shame which likely is why they drink in the first place. Being able to have a one on one, calm conversation about how the person is affecting themselves and others is probably a good route, because people often do not recognize they have a problem in the first place. It would not be surprising for it to end with the person getting angry and storming out, but it plants the seed in a more reasonable way than having everyone they know cornering them, humiliating them, and saying “go to rehab now or we never speak to you again.”

Source: in recovery, worked in the field.

I just noticed the other day that when I clicked on a seat I wanted, it took me to another page where it had a toggle to turn on “show ticket prices with fees included.” I bet that’s how they get around that. I even thought when I saw it how shady that is because it only shows up after you’ve already found a seat you’re interested in, but you’re not quite at the checkout yet. It somehow makes it worse because it’s so fucking blatant.

Bing has honestly been a lot better for me than google. I refused to use it for so long because it was just a joke when it first came out. But I started not being able to find any decent search results on google and the entire first page is now ads versus just the first few results. Bing also has an AI thing that will just give you a straight answer to a question and links to where it found it. I’d say to give it a try.

Proletariat revolution only works when all or most people are on board. One or a few people doing it will just land them in jail basically. This system is structured so that if we do something like that, we will be on the street within a month or two and not be able to care for our families. Please don’t make assumptions about the situations that millions of Americans are trapped in. Especially if it is not something you’ve lived under yourself, or aren’t formally educated in. They don’t call it “manufactured consent” for nothing. We’re born into it and we have to participate in it if we want to survive. Literally.

We’re really caring about student loan servicers’ feelings? Like Nelnet? If that’s what they want to do, then it does show solidarity regardless of how privileged they may be.

How does that work

“Republicans did something fucking stupid that’s bad for their constituents.”

“Oh but but the dems…”

This is why there’s those posts asking how many Russian bots have made it to Lemmy.

There’s a lot of Americans who aren’t having a great time here. I don’t think negative commentary about the US is one hundred percent Europeans’ fault. Nor is it just that we’re “vocal” about things, which is really a positive since it’s the only way to create change anyway.

For example. I just saw a local news story that cops in a major SoCal city are arresting/citing/fining people for just…being homeless. They want them to go to shelters, but they admittedly don’t create enough shelter space. So it just becomes illegal for certain people to exist. The city gets pissy and aggressive about homelessness being a problem, when they’re the ones who created it and are the ones who refuse to fix it. Sure, give a homeless person a record so that it’s even harder for them to get jobs and approved for an apartment, and then fine them knowing they can’t pay it, resulting in doubling late fees that put them in debt. Sounds they really care about fixing the issue, great fucking job. But think about that - it’s against the law, it’s a crime, to not have a mortgage or rent payment. I’ve been hassled by cops for sitting in my own car in a grocery store parking lot. There is no public space. You have to buy something to be allowed to exist outside of a park, and in coastal places like SoCal, you have to pay to be in those too. And yes this was in one city, but it’s applicable to almost every major city in the US, even if there’s some variations in local laws. It’s just an example of how disposable human beings are here. The minute we don’t have labor to sell, the minute we stop consuming, we’re thrown the fuck away. And that’s not just an economic issue, it’s a cultural issue as well.

The immigrants who come here stick around and spend 15 years to become citizens, if it was that bad, they’d turn around and go home.

I think many of “the immigrants” actually do.

Didn’t he steal the idea from two other guys though