@Valhaitham i mean, would you be asking this if the friend were exploring christianity or islam? because they all have the same basis in reality. if your friend isn't hurting people, what do you care?
Absolutely yes. There are parts of those religions that can be prejudiced and hurtful so I would challenge a friend that would fall into them. Of course, if no harm is being done I would be supportive, which is the new position I've taken from the advice here. I recognize there are also benefits from practicing an organized religion for a person that might need it.
Beyond the already presented arguments from the utilitarian perspectives and the perspective of active wealth accumulation that requires a lack of morals, I want to offer a perspective on the control that this much money gives you. Since a billion dollars, or even further, the billions of dollars that billionaires have are hard to imagine/visualize, here is a handy visualization which i urge you to scroll through. (you have to scroll to the right)
Now, beyond being simply astonishingly awful because of the amount of good those people choose not to do, it's evil (I dont like the word in this context but I lack a better one) because of the control these people gain. Having billions of dollars is not just money in the sense you and I think about it. Its control, its capital. Simply through its absurd quantities it gains the emergent property of influencing millions and billions of peoples lifes, often in subtle ways like where factories are built or how resources are allocated, decisions that should by all means have democratic legitimization but are controlled by individuals like feudal lords.
And beyond that, this power influences elections through voters or through plain and simple corruption. But not the kind of small level nepotism we think of where a company wins a bid for some building, but corrpution on a level that influences state legislature and millions of people for decades to come.
Vanilla skyrim is good, but skyrim is also modded skyrim.
Some of those mods are basically games in their own right. And not average games either. Enderal and The forgotten city have won awards and are genuinely great.
You can easily spend a thousand hours playing Skyrim and that's saying something for a game that doesn't rely on grinding or have an online mode.
This couldn't be more untrue. It's all but impossible to mention Skyrim in any gaming of gaming-adjacent space without someone bringing up how Morrowind or Oblivion were better.
Skyrim for me as well. I have literally played thousands of hours. Mostly modded, making different builds. I think I only finished the main quest two times.
I think if a good person were to amass half a billion dollars they would spent enough of it on charity that they could never become a billionaire. So there are no good billionaires, but perhaps a few good millionaires moving to ex-millionaire.
My thoughts as well, pretty much exactly what I meant in my post.
if you're a good person, you wouldn't be rich.
Hardly any millionaires become ex-millionaires by choice, it's that difference that can help distinguish the 'good ones' from the 'not good ones'. If they chose that route through donation, charity, whatever it may be, they are good. If it had to be ripped away from them through just natural shitty circumstances, and otherwise would keep being hoarded, not so much.
I think that's still far too low. If you own even a moderately successful small-medium sized business then you can get to the point where you have more than that.
In personal wealth? Or does the wealth belong to the business?
Business investments or cash reserves or whatever are waaay beyond the scope of this discussion. That would have more to do with antitrust law and what a fair C suite compensation is.
If you started a small business and are wildly successful to the point that you, personally, have $7 million dollars? Then yes, you have too much money.
It's not "this is the amount of money a person starting from nothing can achieve".
It's "this is more money than any one person ever needs, regardless of where it came from".
$7 million really isn't obscene money. If someone has a successful business and retires at 50 years old with $7 million in the bank, assuming they live to 90 that's only $175k per year. Depending on where you live that can range anywhere from very comfortable to barely getting by. Of course, you could invest it and assuming 4% annual yield that's $280k per year, which is the right way to do it. I personally have no issue with someone reaping the rewards of their success. I also think that the rich people hate is misplaced. Why are people mad at the wealthy for not picking up the government's slack, instead of being mad at the government for slacking in the first place?
An aspect of the government not slacking is taxing wealth people and high earners more.
$280k per year
More money than any one person needs. Obviously not as obscene as the ultra wealthy, but there's a cutoff point somewhere in the $150k-200k range where you don't get any extra happiness out of money, it's just pure greed amassing more.
Tax them how though? Honestly, most billionaires don't take a massive salary, many of them have an official salary that is wholly unimpressive. I think Bezos' official salary as CEO of Amazon was under $100k. And I am firmly against the idea of a wealth tax because that means you're taxing someone on money that they don't have. If I find a painting at goodwill that turns out to be worth $100 million, should I be expected to pay taxes on that $100 million even though I only make $20/hour? That would be totally unfair, you'd be taxing me on money I don't have.
If I find a painting at goodwill that turns out to be worth $100 million, should I be expected to pay taxes on that $100 million even though I only make $20/hour?
Obviously you sell the painting to pay the taxes on it. Then you still have $80 million or whatever. Sounds fair to me.
I simply disagree with taxing someone on the perceived value of an asset. I know that's how property taxes work, and yes, I disagree with that too. You shouldn't tax someone on simply owning an asset.
I think the focus on rich people is misguided. You would get way more tax money by properly taxing corporations than you would by taxing billionaires. The personal income of even top level billionaires is still peanuts compared to corporate profits, which can be hundreds of billions per year. I don't care if Musk of Bezos has a personal wealth of hundreds of billions, that money doesn't exist, it's the hypothetical market value of their stock holdings. But major corporations do actually have hundreds of billions of actual liquid income every year, so to me that's fair game for taxing. If Walmart profits $150 billion in a year, then sure, go to town and heavily tax that, because that is actual money and not just value.
I think the focus on rich people is misguided. You would get way more tax money by properly taxing corporations than you would by taxing billionaires. The personal income of even top level billionaires is still peanuts compared to corporate profits, which can be hundreds of billions per year. I don't care if Musk or Bezos has a personal wealth of hundreds of billions, that money doesn't exist, it's the hypothetical market value of their stock holdings. But major corporations do actually have hundreds of billions of actual liquid income every year, so to me that's fair game for taxing. If Walmart profits $150 billion in a year, then sure, go to town and heavily tax that, because that is actual money and not just value.
Always have garlic powder and 3-6 heads of garlic in my kitchen and I am not above roasting a couple of them heads at a moments notice so I can toss roasted garlic into anything.
I like every month or two buying a pound of onions, run em over the mandolin and spend an afternoon doing a nice slow caramelize on em. Reduce em down to a cup or so of dark brown amazingness, toss it in the fridge and add into a bunch of food just like I do roasted garlic.
I've been going for garlic and shallots lately.
In my fridge, there's nearly always a container with garlic butter and olive oil that I make, and another with chopped shallots with salt and pepper, soaking in olive oil.
I'm not sure how much smell is factored into people's enjoyment of garlic, but my nose basically doesn't work (and not because of covid), maybe that's why. It's a nice to have but not that high for me. Disclaimer though, I am Asian. It's just my preference. For example, while garilic is really nice on fried food, I'd rather have them with salted egg sauce, pepper sauce, various spicy condiment etc. There are so many things to add for flavouring and I'm not particularly picky. I do know someone who's a garlic fiend though.
As for eggs, there are so many dishes here with eggs or eggs as a topping, you could have eggs in all your meal for a day and it wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. Like, in a lot of western cultures it's probably normal to have fried eggs on their own in the morning or something. Here it's very easy to just put fried egg or crispy omelette on rice and it won't be strange. Not to mention you can put them in noodles, soup and so on.
New rule I have adopted - going forward, any time I struggle to find good search results on something and find myself wanting to append "reddit" onto the query, I will instead be creating the thread on an applicable forum on a federated site. I recommend others do the same.
It may not give me the immediate answer I'm looking for, but with a bit of patience we can hopefully rebuild a library of knowledge in a more stable way, not vulnerable to the whims of corporate profit.
I feel like someone who has just woken up from cryo-sleep or a soldier who’s finally come out of the jungle after twenty years.
The 90s were great for the most part. The Internet was free and open, and there were zillions of forums and personal websites. I call this period the Genesis of the Web.
Then, things got bad. Microsoft monopolised the Web with its shitty IE 6 browser, websites were riddled with malware and popup ads, and you needed an antivirus and an anti-adware on your PC to be safe. I call this period the dark age of the Web. Most search engines died out, and Google became the king of search.
A couple years into the new millennium, Firefox and HTML 5 came about. There was hope again. Mozilla was fighting the good fight to keep the Web open, and new Web development techniques were developed (jQuery, CSS3, Dojo toolkit, Ajax became easier, etc). As a Web developer, this period was very exciting. You just couldn’t keep up with the new stuff. Firefox’s market share kept increasing, and new websites appeared on the scene: myspace, youtube, thefacebook (basically, proto-social media). Google released their Chrome browser, and IE was dying a slow death. This was the golden age of the Internet.
Then, things got bleak. Apple released their iPhone, and Google released Android. By this time, most personal websites were gone, social media was on the rise, Firefox became less and less relevant, and by the end of the 2010s, the Web had become just a shell of itself. The ‘Web’ was now just a dozen websites owned by powerful corporations. Engagement algorithms were developed to keep people hooked, and Google analytics tracked everything. Privacy was gone for good. This is the period we are currently in. I call it Corpo Web or the Dystopian Web. Some of us did not want to participate in this version of the Web, so we lived in a separate world (what we call the small web).
Finally, someone came up with the idea of Fediverse; platforms that can communicate with each other through open protocols. Corporate social media platforms are falling apart (reddit, twitter, facebook, etc), and Fediverse is exploding. Each Fediverse instance has its own personality, and it reminds me of web rings in a way. There is always something new to discover, be it a new community or a new instance of Lemmy/Mastodon/etc.
What I would love to see though, is a way to Lemmy instances more unique (custom designs, chat system, games, etc). This would encourage people to visit other instances. Also, we should be able to categorise communities and group them together (like a traditional forum).
I completely forgot about web rings, and that’s honestly a great example. It really does feel like we’re getting a little piece of the old Internet back; spreading out and bringing back that individualized experience. And yet the connectivity of the fediverse has the potential to give us some of the good parts of the modern Internet.
A few years down the road this will probably be looked at as a transformative time for the Internet, for better or for worse. Given the negative impact of so called ‘web 2.0’ social media, I’d say getting away from it could have as far reaching positive impacts as getting tied into it had toxic results.
Does Pizza Hut count? Because they got me as a kid with those free personal pan pizzas if you read enough books, so I still love them. It doesn’t hurt that there is a Pizza Hut literally across the street from my apartment now.
I legit have to limit myself. I can only order one pizza per time I’m logged into the webpage. If i open the page and I’m still logged in, I won’t order a pizza. I have to wait until the site logs me out and it prompts me to log in when I open it. Because otherwise…
Man, I completely forgot about the Pizza Hut book club! Getting the little badge and filling everything out with stickers? was the best part of being a kid.
I’m a linguist by education. Questions about “wrong” pronunciations or grammar are nails on a chalkboard to me. Language changes over time; there’s no stopping it, and people have been complaining about it for millennia (see the Appendix Probi, which ranted about changes in Latin that eventually became standard in Western Romance).
There’s an old saw that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. It is also said that “today’s dialects are tomorrow’s languages”. If it helps, think of nonstandard constructions and pronunciations as a sort of sociolinguistic X-Men—they’re the trend that’s coming.
As an ESL teacher I love this. I’ve had coworkers in the past say things like “X is ruining the language!” And I’m just thinking “feel free to tell a river not to flow downhill while you’re at it.”
But just like the river analogy, just because it's prone to change doesn't mean a every change is inevitable.
With enough effort you can divert a river, or stop it flowing at all with a dam. Likewise if enough people look at a chaneg to language and decide "no that's dumb and I'm not doing it", then the change doesn't happen.
Otherwise I could tell you that gnark is now the word for you as an individual, and you'd have no way to tell me that I'm wrong.
If enough people are willing to actively resist the change then the change won't stick. There's nothing magic about the new thing that makes it inevitable.
I'll add to the analogy and say that "downhill" is an apt word choice for where things will go if you let them. Nothing wrong with letting a river take it's natural course but if we want it to work for us it has to be directed and controlled. We can have both aspects of language we just have to conscious of what we want and where it's going.
Strong disagree. Languages are self-correcting. The trope of “The Martians have no word for war!” is bunk because they can simply borrow the term from another language.
For a real-world example, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is very much a Thing, and it is by no means a degenerate form of speech. If anything, it has a richer TAM system than English does.
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