Another problem with satire is that conservatives literally cannot grasp the concept of it, so they also take satirical works, making fun of conservatives, literally.
There are people that watched The Boys and come away from it thinking Homelander is a swell guy. Like, how??
I work with Google ads every day (with small businesses not shit like this)
Press the three dots at the top right and report it as being offensive. Nothing is more frustrating than being disapproved, and it’s often automated with enough clicks. Sometimes it takes a week to get someone at Google to manually unblock an ad even if it was flagged incorrectly (a eye surgeon client of mine being flagged for his ads containing alcohol sales?)
Oh also, I imagine it’ll decrease the relevancy of the ads because Google will automatically take your feedback on board and feed it into the bidding system. The more your ad is deemed irrelevant, the less strength it will have, so will either cost more, or lose rankings against their competitors. (I doubt you can spam this though, it likely has spam protection so lots of people need to do it all the time.)
I went to do exactly this, and then realized I can’t, because I’ve never seen an ad on Google. I’ve been blocking them since I switched from AltaVista and MetaCrawler, where I also blocked ads.
Then again, I rarely use Google these days either, as the results are usually obvious or misleading.
The problem is that the machine is so big that there barely is a “they” anymore. It’s all automated. Support takes days to reply, and they’re all outsourced to sales teams in the Philippines.
It’s crazy I can have an ad disapproved when I didn’t even use the content they say I did, but someone reports an ad multiple times and it stays up. I imagine they have some kind of threshold where a certain percentage of the viewership needs to report it.
I’m talking about Google here, last time I used Facebook was almost a decade ago and their platform was even more of a mess and had much more creepy tracking.
I have a theory about this: We group money in magnitudes of tens up to a million but then jump up from 10x to 1,000x:
1
10
100
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
1,000,000,000
That’s a huge increase but our minds like patterns so we instinctively feel that a billion must be about 10x a million and not the 1,000x it really is, thus leading to huge inaccuracies.
Much of our perception is logarithmic, which is predictable, since patterns occur from proportion of quantities. Absolute quantities are meaningless in themselves. Even ten dollars as a quantity is meaningless except through prior experience understanding the value of a single dollar. Every value except the smallest is tenfold greater than some other value of at least some consequence.
I don’t really understand your initial assumption. What if someone has 10 million dollars? Would you say he has 0.01 billion?
I think that your theory has some merit, but I believe it’s more apparent when we describe the people who own the money, as opposed to the money itself: A millionaire will stay a (multi)millionaire until they become a billionaire.
I think the idea is that we still think of someone who has >1 million but <1 billion as having some number of millions of dollars, rather than subdividing “millions” into “millions,” “tens of millions,” and “hundreds of millions.” Of course we do subdivide that when we’re being particular about how incredibly rich some actor is or something, but generally they all fall on the same order of magnitude in our minds.
That’s my point. We (those of us that aren’t at least millionaires) don’t really differentiate in society between someone that has a million dollars and someone that has 10 million dollars; they’re both stuck in the “millionaires” tier.
So say you are making $50,000 a year, well it’s easy to see how you or someone like you could (theoretically) get to $100,000; that’s just the next tier up. And then it’s easy to imagine someone going from $100,000 to a million because that’s the next tier up again. But once you get there, people don’t tend to think of ten million as a tier and usually not a hundred million either. The next tier in our zeitgeist after million is billion.
So people tend to think of billion being kind of the same as going from $100,000 to $1,000,000. Hence the common disconnect about just how much more money a billionaire has than the common man.
Heck, even before you take into account differing xenobiologies, this has precedent on earth; different cultures are often unused to how other cultures smell.
I’m sensitive to smells and perfumes so any culture that uses them often is difficult for me. Hey are there scent suppressants I can buy or is that future tech?
There would so be a market for it, although I’d rather have the artificial odor market be killed off instead. Saves a lot of waste as well. (as the air pollution, those smells… yuck)
Hey I’m a condo maintenance guy! I swear Snelling garbage and bad smells all day has destroyed my sense of smell. If someone’s wearing strong perfume it bothers me, but I can’t smell bad smells or notice them
I’ve heard that white people smell like bologna. Could never stand the stuff myself, but I can’t vouch for my scent! Tangentially, I think my dogs’ paws smell like salami. “Ol’ salami paws”, I’ve been known to call them.
Disability income is horrifying in the US. You’re essentially disallowed from owning things. Given that Europe will be waking up in a few hours, I’d like to ask whether the situation is panic-inducingly dystopian over there as well.
I’m sure OP was joking but disability checks in USA is a very individualized experience but usually sucks (depending on what categories you may fall under and what funding streams are open). Generally you can not have more than $2,000 total in cash and/or assets (many barely running cars are worth that or more). You usually can work but get often are cut-off completely after making between $1,000-1,500 a month. The actual checks are usually less than a thousand a month barring special needs. Just an overview for anyone unaware of what it is like, obviously in a high cost of living area barring other subsidies (ie housing vouchers) you would have to min/max all costs/income/assets to avoid being perpetually destitute.
Worth noting, at least for SSI, your house (if you have one somehow,) anything inside your house or apartment, and one vehicle do not count as resources. Of course, the vehicle part is an issue because in most states, even living in subsidized housing and every other possible benefit you could have, paying for the insurance basically gives you 0 dollars to work with at the end of the month. Not to mention you can’t afford repairs if anything even minor comes up.
Also, as far as working, you can make up to double your disability income plus around $50 before your disability is shut off, and it turns right back on the second you report that you’ve gone back under that.
In addition, if you were disabled young enough, you can open up an ABLE account that let’s you save up to 100,000 dollars. Other people can also deposit into that account for you up to a certain amount and it won’t count against you. I technically qualify for an ABLE account myself, but I haven’t been able to successfully set one up yet.
Also, some states give SNAP benefits as cash instead of purely food EBT for SSI recipients, which makes life a lot easier because you’re pretty much guaranteed the max amount.
I’ve been surviving by finding subsidized housing where I can easily walk everywhere (and nearby family to support me and shop for me on rare occasions where I can’t walk, which is part of my disability,) cooking meals myself so I can keep them as cheap as possible so I can use the rest of my EBT cash on other things I need, and basically just trying not to have a lot of stuff that would be expensive to replace.
Although I did have a nice moment last year where they realized they weren’t paying me enough and had to give me back payments. 7,000 dollars just fell in my lap over the course of the year and I started getting a bunch more money every month. Happiest I’d been in a while.
If I’m honest though, probably by virtue of living in Vermont, my life’s been far from hard. Around here I randomly get letters sometimes saying they determined I qualify for a benefit I didn’t even know existed, so they automatically set me up with it. I’ll just randomly start getting extra money out of nowhere sometimes because of that.
Meanwhile, I have an also disabled sibling living a state over and his life’s been hell, never having money for things as simple as food and getting his disability shut off because the SSA interviewer didn’t want to do their job and just went “Well you don’t sound disabled.” So yeah, it varies.
Anyone who complains about those on disability mooching off the government should thank their lucky stars that they have no idea what they’re talking about.
It’s horryfiyng but for other reasons. I’m actually on disability and like every other single person on disability in Italy (sure it’s better in other countries) I’m fortunate to have a family (as to not have to rely on the meager check) or else I’d be on the street or worse. Life on here costs about ~800€ a month but they expect (?) people with disability to live with 300/500 a month (the average disability pension) the only person I knew who received more than that (not even that more, barely 800€) was a lady that was literally a vegetable and her cares costed many multiples of 800€, at least the cool thing is that you can receive these brownie points and keep working. Can’t comment on other European nations as they’re all different in som ways.
Edit: oh also when you turn 18 the gov agency in charge of disabilities and pension does whatever is it in its power to strip you of your meager check🙄
Technically possible, sure. Just don’t get caught during a random inspection where someone surreptitiously follows you for multiple days to see whether you’re faking.
Varies greatly by country, but Denmark here. It’s not the absolute worst, however getting on permanent disability aka early retirement is a years long process and the government will drag its feet like crazy on it while doing everything they can to find out that maybe you can work after all.
In that time until the government finally decides that you qualify for permanent disability/early retirement, you get to be on long term unemployment benefits which grants you about (at the highest tier, depending on age and living situation) 800 EUR after taxes and bills have been paid. If this can’t be reached normally you’ll get a little bonus called housing security to get you up there. While on unemployment benefits you cannot have more than 1300 or so EUR in your bank account and assets like a car, or that will count against your benefits. You must use your own money to pay your way first, then you get unemployment benefits. All the while you’re forced to go to meetings at the job centre, take on unpaid internships, and send out job applications for as long as it takes the government to move on. Oh, and forget about traveling or going on vacation. You are to be available for “work” at all times, and if they find out you’ve been gone it cuts into your benefits. Not that you can really afford to travel anyway.
Finally once you’re approved for early retirement, well, that’s what it is. You get a bit more money from the public pension, the restrictions are gone, and if you want you can even supplement with a part time job.
It physically hurts to know that the US system is essentially identical to any other. It really offers a 1-2 punch to anyone unlucky enough to become disabled. I sincerely appreciate you writing this out, it was eye-opening.
I think the main difference you’ll generally see is how much money is given (800 EUR after taxes and utility bills comes out to about 1600 EUR gross depending on one’s living situation), and how much certain things are subsidized. At least in the unemployment part of the process. Let’s take dental health as an example: this isn’t covered by public healthcare, so you get to pay in full for any visits to a dentist.
However, for people on unemployment benefits this is subsidized either fully or almost fully. There’s a certain threshold at which you may have to request to have it subsidized, but often the dentist will just send the bill straight to the government. This is of course fucked up in its own right when you consider that if you have a job, no matter how little it pays, the government will want nothing to do with you there. A lot of people with jobs can’t afford dental work and get no support whatsoever from the government for it.
As well, once you’ve reached the point of early retirement or permanent disability, should you choose to take on a part time job it will cut into your benefits if you earn above a certain threshold from the job. However, unlike in the US, doing so gradually cuts into your benefits rather than just shutting it off. And again, all the restrictions from unemployment are gone here. You’re free to save as much as you like, travel, whatever.
Ah, I misunderstood the unemployment benefits portion! That’s entirely my mistake. In that case, your system is far and away more reasonable and I apologize. It still physically hurts that disability is horrifically broken in the US but at least it isn’t universal. I hope we’ll eventually achieve something approaching acceptable treatment.
I believe it. The algorithm keeps pushing far right videos to my feed despite Google knowing damn well that I can’t stand Republicans. Not to mention that it likes to show left wing media to the far right, so that they can dislike it and brigade the comments. Yet when a Fox News video is posted, nothing but likes and praise in the comments. If you didn’t know any better it could lead you to believe that 90% of Americans are MAGA Republicans.
I buy $2 sale priced ebooks from the play store occasionally and I’ve had a couple dozen hard right trash tracts from folks like Jordan Peterson dropped into my “Books for You” recommendations. The best part is that you can’t flag them as “not interested” from the play store, you have to open a separate app (Play Books), navigate to the same feed, find the book and then you can tell the algorithm to get that shit out of your face.
I would consider myself pretty leftist, but I still occasionally get stuff like that, too. The only thing I can think of is that I am into fishing and the fishing demographic skews towards viewing right-wing content, I imagine. Maybe you have some other interest that aligns with people who watch right wing related stuff somewhere somehow?
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, if anything it’s got to be a hiccup in the YouTube content algorithm somewhere.
The car stuff might somehow be skewing it depending on what type of car stuff, but honestly who knows. It’s Google, so they may be pulling stuff from anywhere that your Google/YouTube email is allowed to access data.
It could maybe just skew towards showing right-wing stuff by default because it gets its normal righty viewers, plus the lefty hate watchers that way. Those kind of videos probably get more engagement, too, with full on debates going on in the comments.
Out of curiosity, are you Canadian, or just on the Canadian instance? I ask because if memory serves the search results tend to be a combination of search history (if you have personalized ads enabled, you can opt out of them), country/region, and general subject/topic (so in this case social apps), probably among other details.
Worse, actually. My net at $58,000CAD got me $3,600/mo. If I wanted a simple 2bd today it would be now two thirds of my take-home. The friend who rents my guest bedroom has become my roommate over the last few months as they’ve been unable to find a place that’s even vaguely reasonable.
Maybe for some fucking dignity? Maybe because people deserve some life alongside their survival?
A working person who’s in their career should be able to afford more than a one bedroom apartment. That second room could be for hobbies, a work-from-home office, a guest bedroom, a library, whatever. And that’s just in an ideal situation but what if they’re a single parent(could be for any reason including something completely unavoidable like their spouse passing away for some reason) who needs a room for their child? And while I’m on about it, those people are a couple who would share a bedroom so then what? Pretty much every single person needs personal space away from their partner from time to time and the shared bedroom ain’t it.
Rich people don’t need boats or luxury vehicles yet they always seem to find excuses for that but having a 2bd apartment is considered irresponsible spending and that’s horseshit. It’s not the employee’s job to debase themselves in every aspect of their lives so someone who clearly can’t manage a business effectively can pretend they have any skill in doing so.
I lived with my parents, then I lived in a shared apartment, then I lived in a studio apartment, I had dignity and life. You don't need 3 rooms per person, you don't need a yacht, you don't need servants. If you can afford them good for you, but holy privilege demanding that as if it was a bare necessity.
Congrats for you. Here’s the thing, the reason we can’t all have enough to be comfortable isn’t because life is hard, it’s because the resources are kept from us by thieves we hilariously call “elites”.
I’m sorry that I want a better life than scraping by. I’m sorry I don’t love the taste of boot the same way you do. I’m not asking for a mansion you fucking donut. I didn’t ask for servants or yachts or any of that shit. I’m asking for literally one more room and for good reasons which I have already outlined. If you can’t win the argument without completely making shit up then accept the loss and back down.
We are earning it. This generation is the most productive one ever and yet all the value we create is being increasingly funnelled to executives who do next to nothing.
Wages are stagnant as hell and rent and shit is going up by astronomical amounts even for units that haven’t really changed operating costs in years just because.
Quit sucking boot and stand up for yourself, damn. The rich aren’t going to reward you for this.
That’s great, dude. Why you gotta be such a spiteful little bitch towards everyone else? The information on why not everyone has those opportunities is out there so really you’re either trying to defend a corporation’s right to fuck ocer employees or you’re genuinely so stupid and emotionless as to not understand how any of this works or care to learn at all.
And oh wow, a whole house, eh? Sounds kinda greedy. What’s next, a mansion? Four cars? Seriously, some self-awareness would god a long fuckin’ way here, dude.
Yeah, a whole house. And you didn't find me complaining why two bedroom apartments were so expensive when I was single. Just the one car, since public transport is quite good around here. Thanks for asking.
here in sweden most cities have some amount of municipal housing, where you can get a family-sized apartment for like $1200 equivalent, or a studio apartment for $300-400
it's almost like socialism works, and it works so fucking well that they have to legally restrict the municipal housing from being more than like 17% of the housing supply lest it nuke all private landlords from orbit
In reality things are, unfortunately, complicated.
A central reason why genocide is so special is because it could call for UN intervention. Therefore, the UN definition is of some importance, which goes as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Notice that according to the UN, the murder of political groups is not considered genocide. The Genocide convention was signed in 1948, and Stalin was not too keen on not being kept from killing political opponents. You could of course still argue political mass violence to be genocide, it just isn't according to the convention.
There are perhaps two more interesting points that stand out. One is that the likelihood of success is not observed: merely the intention. The lunatic in the US killing a Palestinian child and wounding his mother was genocidal, as his intention was to kill Palestinians in order to rid them off the earth. It doesn't so much matter that one mentally deranged person with a knife is unlikely to have much success in the task.
Intent causes a further problem, which is of course why the UN is not going to intervene in Israel: It's very easy to hide your intentions. There are certainly members of Hamas who speak (or spoke) openly of removing the nation of Israel off the face of the earth, and you could therefore relatively easily label their actions as genocidal before the ICC if necessary.
With Israel it is, of course, more complicated. They are certainly using collective punishment, murdering civilians and children at an extremely high rate. However, they will insist that the intention is not to destroy the national group that is Palestinians: Most of them will argue that that the intention is to fight off Hamas, and that civilian casualties are just an unfortunate side effect of any war, even if just. Some lunatics will claim that they cannot kill off Palestinians as a nationality because Palestine never existed in the first place. The latter group would likely be less successful in the Hague.
If Israel can reasonably claim that their intention is not to destroy a group of people according to the convention, they will always be able to claim it is not a genocide and be at least technically correct.
There are two main implications as far as I'm concerned:
The UN will stand by and do nothing as civilians are murdered, just like it always does.
Legally, genocide is not a particularly fruitful term to throw about when discussing an ongoing conflict. Targeting civilians in murderous massacres is always deplorable. Endlessly arguing whether or not it formally fits the definition of genocide matters when the UN is considering intervention, but it is hardly relevant when considering whether or not war crimes are okay. These actions are despicable and should be forcefully protested, independently of whether they can be proven to meet the high bar of genocide.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the UN basically just a collective entity of the majority of the world's nations and not its own body? The same issues came up with Russia's invasion and how the UN couldn't do anything. The UN is more of a neutral place to talk out disagreements than a police force. I agree with everything you say, but wherever I see "UN" it needs to be "United Nations", as in the rest of the world...and how "we" are all just shrugging our shoulders and saying there's technically nothing we can do about people dying.
In defence of the UN, the UN schools in Gaza are rare sites of hope in normal times and invaluable lifesavers these days. And I have friends in the UN who were working their ass off trying to improve the situation even before the war broke out, and who I'm currently trying to convince to get some sleep between turns. The fact that the UN cannot work as a world police (except under exceptional circumstances and sadly so far strictly theoretically) doesn't mean it does not have an important role to play.
It's incredibly flawed, but it's what we got, and at least that's something.
Yeah, definitely. It’s far better to have an admittedly weak UN that still tries to and often succeeds in being an influence for good in the world than to not have it at all. Thanks for your insights you’re able to bring into this thread.
Pretty much. Russia could veto intervention in Ukraine as they are permanent members of the Security Council, together with China, France, the UK, and the US. In practice it's incredibly rare for these five to agree on anything in international politics enough for the UN to be anything more than a lame duck.
Kind of. It's a rare opening for the use of legitimate force against a sovereign state, but it's extremely hard to use.
Technically, if something meets the definition it would still be genocide even if the Security Council didn't recognize it as such. In practice however, members of the Security Council can always claim the intention to be lacking, rendering it for all intents and purposes limited to political opportunity.
Of course, I'm speaking from a international law/politics perspective. This doesn't falsify the dictionary definition; the word itself simply comes from latin gens, a group of people from a common ancestor, and cide, killing. Using it in that way normal conversation is not at all wrong.
It will, however, land you in frustrating discussions with people who will insist on the UN definition, and who are trained to only use the word genocide when they believe they can truly support it in the strictest sense. Which is why, depending on audience, it's often easier to speak of war crimes and the murdering of civilians. Which should be equally powerful as long as you're not actively making a case for the UN to intervene. And if you are making that case, you should absolutely be aware of the UN definition and its challenges.
The genocide/not genocide discussion risks becoming a distraction, and a lot of bad guys could score an apparent point by experts in the field having to confess that they cannot safely qualify their murdering of civilians as genocide. It doesn't make the actions any less deplorable; it's merely why you're not going to see a lot of commentators use the word "genocide" about ongoing situations.
The UN definition renders it a word that is almost impossible to use, but in turn it's the only concept in international law (at least that I can think of) that opens for the legitimate use of force against a sovereign state outside of war. So there are pros and cons.
The problem is the same as with “theory”: you use the colloquial definition to name things, then try and enforce the consequences of the technical definition.
openly of removing the nation of Israel off the face of the earth, and you could therefore relatively easily label their actions as genocidal
“Israel” is a national entity ruled over by a state - calling for the destruction of a classical liberal nation state (never mind a colonialist-settler project masquerading as one) isn’t genocide in any shape or form. You might as well argue that people calling for the abolition of the Apartheid-state were “calling for genocide.”
Legally, genocide is not a particularly fruitful term
Not everything is about legality - we all know who writes the laws and for whose benefit they are written.
Remember that every time you click an ad, you cost the advertiser somewhere between 10c and several dollars. And that which ads you’ve clicked on informs which ads you will get in the future. It would be a shame if somebody weaponized this knowledge and clicked ads without any actual interest in buying the products.
No. It’s an open secret kind of deal that most online advertisements don’t actually sell or do anything. In fact, a large amount of google views are bots.
How? Because there’s nothing stopping thousands of apps from using the ads incorrectly and showing them to phones or accounts or users that aren’t real people. At least with iOS, it’s very hard to run instances on servers or bot clients. Meanwhile, android can run on windows. Exploits galore.
But, no one cares. The companies are told to spend more on advertisement. The ad department of the company has a budget, they don’t care where it’s spent. So they buy ads from google and they don’t care who they get shown to 90% of the time. Everyone wins except the company but the company doesn’t care because they’re already making money.
Not to mention that the average consumer is shown thousands of ads a day. The more they see the less they notice the ads.
Basically ads are just designed to waste time for everyone. Truth social ads just lead to more installs by people already looking for their garbage app.
Depends on if they pay per view or per click. And then depends on the site/app, the location of the ad, and the bid.
For the Play Store, the CPM is usually around $10-15. So for every 1,000 people who see the ad, they pay $10-15.
YouTube can be $30-40 for the video ads with some going up close to $80. An ad at the bottom of a news site can be as little as $0.50.
The ads you’ll be shown will be the highest bidder who meets the criteria to display it. In general, the more targeted it is, the higher the bid. So McDonald’s might just say, “show this ad anywhere on the site to anyone who is in the US” and bid $0.25. A high-end watch company might say “Show this at a banner ad to men who are between 30-45, have an income above $150K, who care about fine products, likely own multiple nice watches, and are visiting high end watch websites” and bid $50.
I used to have an extension that hid ads from me, but in the background clicked on every one. I’m super annoyed that I forgot the name of it.
It made the sites I visited more money and hid the ads from me while hurting the advertisers (by costing more money) and ad networks (by screwing with the value proposition from advertising). It was great!
No. It fits Captain Angel’s perspective as an edgy pirate pining after their lover, but Starfleet is full of hopeful, enthusiastic scientists who are in space because they want to be. They love exploration for exploration’s sake, and are on a ship full of people who likely have similar interests.
Angel’s perspective is warped by their passion; I mean, they’re literally in the middle of hijacking a Starfleet ship to get their lover back. They think their dependency on love is universal, when in reality most people are more emotionally stable than them. Although it probably helps when you’re in Starfleet and have an incredibly supportive working environment and not, you know, a pirate crew.
Starfleet is driven by love and passion, just not in the toxic way that Angel is. Its a passion for exploration and discovery, and a love for your comrades and fellow lifeforms. Angel is right, she just goes about it in entirely the wrong way.
True enough; it’s a very different framing, but there’s still love there, still passion.
I think a big difference is that Starfleet folks tend to be more intrinsically driven. Space isn’t something that needs to be “made bearable” (unless you’re McCoy I guess)—space is cool in its own right, tons of things to see and people to meet. But on top of that, the Federation has such a high tech level and quality of life that living on a starship is pretty luxurious.
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