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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Man, I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, but I’m talking about DoorDash and DoorDash drivers in reality as it is today. I do not own DoorDash, so you are not subsidizing my business. The service offered is just bringing your food to your door, there isn’t really any “good” service that can be used to justify a tip or vice versa. If people decide that the cost of a DoorDash delivery plus a tip is too much, they won’t close the app and go get their food themselves–they will just not tip like OP did and like you do and they will both receive a message like the one above. If you want to have your order picked up quickly, you have to place a winning bid.

    THAT is what capitalism is–not some idealized pursuit of profit that refuses to exploit its workers; but a house of cards built out of dozens of competing contradictions, full of people hoping to leave someone else holding the bag when it all comes crashing down. I recommend reading Contradiction 7 of Seventeen Contradictions and The End of Capitalism, “The Contradictory Unity of Production and realisation”. It’s all about how capitalists are fighting the competing contradictions of wanting to sell their goods for as much as possible while paying their laborers as little as possible, and what the broader social impacts of that may be.


  • Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly?

    Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism

    "What is, in fact, a social relation between people (between capitalists and exploited laborers) instead assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things.”

    We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.

    If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?

    It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?


  • Ok, call your extra payment whatever name you want, and get the ball rolling on legislating new regulations to ensure fair pay. They deserve to get paid more, and when/if those regulations go through the drivers will have a better future.

    That didn’t answer the question, though. We both agree that drivers deserve to get paid more, so why not open up your wallet and start paying them more now? Why wait months or years for legislation to go through to force you to pay more, when the power to make sure your driver is paid well is sitting in the palm of your hand today? Your individual act of tipping or not tipping will do nothing to address the system at large, but it will do everything to ensure your driver driver gets paid fairly for the labor they perform while they serve you.


  • I don’t think we can trust any information obtained by the Shin Bet. They’re infamous for torturing and killing Palestinians.

    Kamal Adwan Hospital director Ahmad Kahlot of Jabalya in northern Gaza has confessed to the Shin Bet that Hamas took over his hospital as a military operations center, it was revealed on Tuesday.

    Kahlot told his interrogators that he joined Hamas in 2010 at the equivalent rank of a brigadier general.

    If you put someone in enough pain, they will say anything to make it stop. Notice how he is wearing a thick, heavy jacket that covers all exposed skin except his face.


  • Eh. Some level of advertising is necessary.

    I used to run a Magic: the Gathering shop right when it opened. We had great prices, great prizes, a phenomenal gaming area, and since I was the only employee I knew the customer service was top notch.

    None of that would have mattered, though, if people didn’t know I existed. I knew I could eventually rely on word of mouth to grow my community, but I still had to get the first customers in the door for the first time.

    And coming at it from the other side, lots of online services that we use for “free” are paid for by ads being shown to us. If those ads were banned, we would see large upsets in how those services are paid for. There’s potential for good here, since one possible response could be subsidization and commodification of websites like YouTube, reddit, and Facebook, but who knows what the chances of that could be.




  • Why did you use the Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary to define Zionism, as opposed to the Oxford Reference? From the Oxford Reference, emphasis mine:

    A movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.

    In the same vein, why didn’t you use wikipedia to define Zionism like you did for for kahanism? FTA on Wikipedia about Zionism, emphasis mine:

    Zionism (/ˈzaɪəˌnɪzəm/; Hebrew: צִיּוֹנוּת Tsīyyonūt, [tsijoˈnut]; derived from Zion) is a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to enable the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition.

    What both of these definitions point out that the one you linked did not mention is that original Zionism was about more than just the creation of a Jewish state–it was about the creation of a Jewish state in the Jewish holy land. That last bit is important-- there would be no Israeli-Palestinian conflict if Israel was located in Idaho.



  • It appears the main festive flotilla was perhaps a distraction. Organisers had decided early during the convoy that a smaller supply boat, the most crucial in the mission, should take a different route and not go with the main group to the vicinity of Second Thomas Shoal, which is a major flashpoint.

    “Because everybody was looking at the main convoy and the mother ship, what they didn’t know was that ML Chowee [the supply boat] was already in safer, more shallow waters, and was able to sneak past all the tension,” said David.

    SECRET SANTA SECRET SANTA




  • I think the difference between these two situations is the disruption of commerce.

    Capitalists do not give a shit about protests until the protests start affecting their bottom line. That’s why blocking freeways is such a big deal–it speaks to them in a language that they understand. It’s effective not because John Q Taxpayer can’t get to work on time, but because Corporation Q Capital-owner can’t exploit John’s labor without his butt in his seat and without trucks full of resources coming in regularly. Corporations lose much, much more than regular people do when commerce is disrupted.

    Grabbing the microphone like is disruptive, but it does not disrupt commerce. If anything, it shows that his goal is to deplatform someone (someone whose platform is the very reason he is there tonight, by his own admission) or to elevate his own platform.


  • Then that means they don’t lack empathy-- that just means that, by your estimation, they misallocate empathy.

    The thing about allocation of empathy is that it is subjective. Some people will allocate more empathy to some groups of people than they will others, and that’s just part of the human condition. I care more about homeless people and transgender rights than I do men’s rights in divorce and tax breaks for the middle class–not because of a lack of empathy for the second groups, but because of an abundance of empathy for the first.

    It’s the same way here–some people support Israel with all its benefits and flaws over Palestine with all its benefits and flaws, or the other way around, because they have more empathy for one group than the other.

    Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely people on both sides who have no empathy for enemy civilians, and frustratingly both of those groups of people have somewhat reasonable arguments informing that lack of empathy. But saying that an entire group of people has no empathy is painting with far too broad of a brush and somewhat ironically shows a momentary lapse of empathy from the person saying it.


  • I don’t think that’s fair. I think one of the reasons why this conflict is so dear to so many people who aren’t directly affected by it is because their connection to it is guided by empathy.

    Lots of people support Israel because they are guided by their empathy for the historical suppression of Jewish people and their right for self-determination, while being unaware of (or begrudgingly approving of, or occasionally enthusiastically approving of) the atrocities committed both by its armed forces and by civilian settlers in Israel’s name.

    Similarly, lots of people (myself included) support Palestine because they are guided by their empathy for the present-day suppression of Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, while being unaware of (or begrudgingly approving of, or occasionally enthusiastically approving of) the atrocities committed by Hamas in Palestine’s name.


  • Can you imagine the rage and the devastation these expectant parents must feel? They have baby rooms decorated. They have baby clothes that they have to decide to either keep forever or eventually get rid of. They’ve been living in a happy, anxious, exciting whirlwind for the last nine months, and now that has been destroyed and they have to recover from that trauma in an active warzone.

    Wherever you think those parents will place the blame for this–Hamas, the IDF, British colonialism, United Nations meddling, or all of the above–think of what the real, systemic victims look like. Think of how it feels to know that your sibling died and if they are ever memorialized, it will be one name among 10,000.


  • Thank you for that study from 2015. I don’t doubt that Israel took it into consideration when they made the claims they did about the Great March of Return in 2017 and 2018. I want to draw your attention to two of the key points mentioned:

    National governments should be able to publicly justify their position, and reveal their adversary’s use of civilians in combat. This can only be accomplished by thoroughly documenting incidents, preparing supportive messages, and working across multiple channels to convey those narratives.

    Would you say that any of the recent claims Israel has made were “thoroughly documented”? Or was the world supposed to take Israel at its word?

    Priority should be given to information activities aimed at the very civilians who are used as human shields, in order to undermine the adversary and convince civilians to actively or passively refuse to serve as human shields. Such activities need to be coherent, consistent and coordinated.

    What coherent, consistent, and coordinated activities has Israel taken to undermine Hamas in the eyes of civilians? Has Israel taken any coherent, consistent, and coordinated activities to increase Hamas’s authority?

    Also, thank you for providing a source about those shots. I checked the source you posted, and the article says this:

    Media intelligence agency Storyful confirmed that the video was recorded at the al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital based on Google Maps images, but was unable to say whether the terror group or Israeli forces was responsible.

    Independent journalist Alexander Higgins reported on X that jihadists began shooting after Israeli forces agreed to allow civilians to evacuate the hospital.

    The Israel Defense Forces have surrounded the facility — which it says doubles as a terrorist citadel — as it attempts to root out Hamas in response to its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, including 33 Americans.

    Clicking through to the twitter link shows a video where it’s unclear who is firing shots, where they come from, or where they land. The only source saying that it was Hamas is Some Dude On Twitter whose bio reads “Freed by Elon”. The video also shows zero civilian casualties on screen, and the general lack of terror in the crowd makes me assume that there were also no off-screen civilian casualties.

    There is no evidence saying that Hamas fired these shots–and even if it was Hamas that did the shooting, they didn’t hit any civilian targets. IDF snipers can not or will not show that same level of restraint.