• 20 Posts
  • 661 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: April 1st, 2022
  • comfy@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Do you or don't you believe in comeuppance? If so why or why not?
    2·
    6 days ago

    I’m not sure what you mean by “believing in” comeuppance. It doesn’t automatically happen when people do bad things, it’s not a real material thing. People can do harmful things that sometimes cause people to react and punish them, and I’d say that fits your definition of comeuppance, but it’s not some guaranteed or spiritual concept. So I can’t say I believe in comeuppance, even when it happens.

    If you mean in a sense of justice, I don’t really advocate punitive justice, as gratifying as it is. What comeuppance does someone truly atrocious on a mass scale deserve? There’s a point where you’d need to artificially prolong someone’s life for thousands of years of torture just to scrape the surface of the suffering they’ve caused to humanity (let alone other creatures), some proper “I Have No Mouth” sci-fi stuff would be the necessary fate to qualify as Hitler’s comeuppance. And what does it accomplish? Not much. In the end, just give them a bullet as quickly as possible to prevent them hurting more people, we can leave ironic fates to the novelists.

  • comfy@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•Soon
    4·
    14 days ago

    Where is that constraint coming from? “Death to [x]” is a statement of a desire.

    “Death to Americans” would be a call for the deaths of citizens. Obviously Iran doesn’t consider the typical American citizen to be oppressing them, so they are not interested in calling for that.

    Someone yelling “death to America” could still be supporting the death of George W. Bush or Donald Trump, who are Americans. It could even involve combating many in the US military. That’s still very different from calling for “death to Americans”, because the target is the regime, not its citizens simply for being citizens.

    But I still think you’ve raised an interesting discussion to have so I’ve tried to answer it.

    In an ideal world, regime change. Relatively peaceful dissolution is preferable and possible (consider the death of the Soviet Union).

    However, given the ruthlessness of the people with the most power in the US, I suspect they would gladly kill millions of Americans before even considering a peaceful surrender. People are shot by the state in regular protests, let alone one directly threatening the state (case in point - Jan 6 had a protester killed by police). So unless some interesting lucky opportunities open up (such as a military coup), the USA will (continue to) kill Americans to maintain stability, regardless of whether those opposing the USA kill a single American.

    Given that situation, it sounds like any resistance to the US is bad because will likely involve deaths of innocent people. Yes, but the other side of the story is that to do nothing ‘‘also’’ results in the deaths of innocent people. To the people running the show, it’s completely normal to oversee the constant atrocious social murder of many thousands each year through poverty, artificial scarcity of food and medication, healthcare denial and other neglect in the name of profit. We overproduce enough food to feed everyone, there’s enough land and property to house everyone.

    To do nothing is to allow many Americans to keep dying each day from easily preventable deaths. To fix that system will most likely kill many Americans in the process. You can almost simplify it down to a trolley problem - there’s no clean solution whichever choice you make. But, for each of us, there is a correct decision.

  • comfy@lemmy.mltoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•French City of Lyon Kicks Out Microsoft
    18·
    15 days ago

    In my tired daze I mistakenly read ONLYOFFICE as OpenOffice and was about to yell No!

    The article does well and links to their other article on the OO 9.0 release, which explains why it’s probably a smarter choice for this office situation when compared to LibreOffice:

    ONLYOFFICE is one of two options that comes to mind when I think of a solid Microsoft Office alternative on Linux, the other being LibreOffice. Both offer a range of useful features and support a wide range of document formats. What sets ONLYOFFICE apart, though, is its focus on collaboration and generally reliable compatibility with Microsoft Office files.

  • comfy@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What are the websites, articles, books or games most intellectually stimulating to you?
    2·
    17 days ago

    I’ve found that when I’m deciding to try out something creative or artistic, I start to look for techniques in other people’s works when I might otherwise just be enjoying them on a surface level. Anyone can look at a work and say if it’s pretty or not, if it seems well-designed, how it makes you feel, but when you start to ask how an artist does that, you quickly discover techniques that you may be able to apply to your own art, your own writing. You can even look at a list of techniques [1] and then start to identify when creators are using them, and how to use them effectively. The more you experience and the more you think about it, the more understanding and the more tools you have at your fingertips. And by forcing yourself to get into D&D, you’re throwing yourself into a game that will help you develop that variety of skills, and probably into a scene where plenty of people know enough of those skills that you can rapidly learn from them, see what they do brilliantly and see what they could do better.

  • comfy@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What should be done with the unemployable people?
    25·
    18 days ago

    Since this question is asking “should”, I think it’s fine to answer with a rational but radical answer:

    • People can be useful to society even if they aren’t employed in our current economies. Retired people may not have jobs, but often still perform productive or necessary labor, like maintenance, artistic contributions, child care, historical preservation. When someone isn’t working for money, they still often voluntarily work for society!
    • I believe that, generally speaking, it’s within society’s best interest, even just from an economic standpoint, to support these people even if they aren’t formally employable.
    • Looking at most capitalist countries, overproduction is normal. Usable property remains empty just because an owner wants more money for their investment. Perfectly edible food is systematically thrown in bins rather than given to hungry people for free, or rejected by stores because it doesn’t look perfect (like an oddly shaped carrot). Clothes are thrown out once they’re “unfashionable”.

    We have all the resources needed to support everyone, and it wouldn’t take much extra effort from a determined government to get those resources where they need to go. There’s no reason why unemployed people should be left to starve and freeze simply because they don’t have enough income. In our society, the scarcity of basic needs is artificial (‘artificial scarcity’).

    Automation is seen as a bad thing, a threat, because workers in society are threatened with starvation if they don’t have the income needed for food, shelter, medicine and perhaps basic luxuries. But if our political economy were first-and-foremost based around society’s needs instead of profiting, and therefore we used our modern technology to automate the production of these basic needs and distribute them, then suddenly automation would mean free time and easier labor!