ZombieTheZombieCat

@[email protected]

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Dozens of health organizations pledge ‘full support’ for federal ban on menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars (www.cnn.com)

Eighty national public health groups, including the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Preventative Medicine, placed a full-page ad in Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post in support of a federal ban on menthol in cigarettes and all...

ZombieTheZombieCat,

When are we going to start banning flavored alcohol like White Claw and Mike’s while we’re at it

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Is it just me, or do most top comments on this post read like astro-turfing?

I’ve been thinking this a lot about posts on lemmy and it’s really disappointing.

But it’s not just the corporate stuff that’s disappointing. A post on the front page right now about Spotify not removing the intentionally hateful transphobic song has an entire comment section justifying hate speech.

I question staying on lemmy more and more because I’m seeing trash rhetoric like this more and more and it’s fucking gross.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Georgia: Symbols, including accents, are prohibited.

Not even trying to hide the racism / xenophobia

ZombieTheZombieCat,

There’s this short series on Netflix called Unbelievable. I recommend every single person watch it, but especially anyone who wants / needs to know exactly what it’s like to try to report sexual abuse to the police. It’s dramatized but it’s based on a true story of an 18 year old girl who was sexually assaulted by someone who broke into her apartment in the middle of the night. From the minute she reported it she was treated like a criminal. She was interrogated by cops who criticized her from the second they sat down. She ended up being charged and convicted of making false police reports. She was in some kind of group home at the time. She got in trouble, lost her friends, home, supports, and job. Several years later, the suspect assaulted another woman and was finally caught. I can’t imagine the relief and vindication she must have felt. Except that the cops literally allowed the suspect to assault at least one more person before doing anything about it. It’s a good thing it happened in another state because if it had happened in the same place they probably would have just arrested the second victim too.

But the depiction in the show is true to life. It’s for everyone who has ever said “well if it actually happened then why didn’t they just call the cops?”

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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.

FUCK TICKETMASTER (Rant)

I FUCKING HATE THIS SERVICE. Assholes don’t let you delete your account and ask you to go to their privacy policy page and read through 500 pages of text to find the instructions on how to delete your account, only for it to say you have to contact them to delete it, and when you contact them they never respond back other than...

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

It’s really disingenuous to compare US-only data to unrelated generalizations of other countries that function under different cultural and economic systems. But I feel like you already know that.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

What does calling the cops on neighbors have to do with a manslaughter trial though. There can be people who have a legitimate reason to do that, and then there’s those people who are calling the cops every other day, but it doesn’t specify. It’s just kind of comical that that would be used to somehow legitimate a completely unrelated manslaughter conviction.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

She gets to have a life after those 8 years.

Having a life after a criminal conviction in the US is not a thing.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Thank you, someone in these comments who’s rational and not just out for blood ffs

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Have you ever heard of Brock Turner, or maybe Johnny Depp? Good luck getting any women to go near you though.

Besides, these sentences are insane in general and modern first world societies (meaning not the US) do not focus on punishing people like we do. They focus on rehabilitation because it’s a service to society, because they actually give a shit about their societies. So the fact that anyone can think that fifteen years of being locked in a cage getting angrier and angrier with no psych help and shit for healthcare “isn’t enough,” really says something about the people who endorse that.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

They’re either far-right/“both sides,” or tankies defending China when no one even mentioned it.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

often a flight that could have been a train ride

I see you’ve never been to America.

And if you don’t feel the need to treat the people with dignity who use a cheaper airline, then you probably shouldn’t be working for a cheaper airline. Everyone should be treated with respect until they prove they don’t deserve it.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

When I couldn’t just purchase a season of a tv show (Drag Race). You should just be able to buy a show or movie if you want to watch it.

The most recent season was exclusively on Paramount +. I guess they had exclusive right because it wasn’t available anywhere else. It was 3.99/month with a discount so I figured I’d keep it as long as the season aired. I was fucking amazed that there could be twenty fucking commercials in an hour show. If I wanted to skip backward or forward I had to watch three more ads first. Two weeks before the season finale they raised the price to 5.99 so I cancelled it. I didn’t need to watch it that badly. Their other content was shit, all nineties MTV and made for tv movies. When I signed up they advertised Yellowjackets so I was going to watch that. But no, that’s another subscription to Showtime.

It was the cheapest subscription I’ve had but the most aggravating experience, because it’s not about the money. It’s about feeling like I’m getting fucked over with every goddamn thing I buy lately.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

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.

Joe Biden’s DOJ Is Claiming “There Is No Constitutional Right to a Stable Climate” (jacobin.com)

In the same week large swaths of the US were under extreme heat warnings, Joe Biden’s Justice Department filed its most recent motion to dismiss a landmark climate case by arguing that nothing in the Constitution guarantees the right to a secure climate.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

This is a legal proceeding and the constitution is the fundamental basis for legal precedence in the US.

Someone should tell that to the supreme court.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

athletic advantages/disadvantages diminish after ~2 years of HRT

This is what I keep thinking whenever I hear about this “debate.” But I guess if the bigots admitted they know how hormones work, then they wouldn’t have an outlet for their transphobia.

People who back into parking spots: Why?

To me, it seems objectively easier to pull into a parking space forward and then back out of the space when you are ready to leave. You don’t have to line up with the lines while driving backwards, and it’s easier to keep from hitting other cars as well. So why back in? To me, the only advantage I can think of is that you...

ZombieTheZombieCat,

What a weird thing to be high and mighty about

ZombieTheZombieCat,

If you find reversing in to a space hard then maybe you shouldn’t be driving a giant metal death machine.

Or, if you find backing out of a parking space without hitting pedestrians to be hard, etc.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Generally not a lot of traffic in parking lots.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

If you look at the state driver’s manuals from the dmv it actually says exactly that. It’s already considered a privilege. Otherwise you wouldn’t have to test into it and pay annually to keep your car on the road.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

I’m buying a dvd player, fuck these greedy pieces of shit

ZombieTheZombieCat,

most local news sites came online as garbage and will never rise above that status

The amount of pop-ups, sleazy Taboola ads, and autoplay videos (with 2 ads at the beginning and end of a 30 second clip) is too damn high. Just clicking a link is a fucking assault on your eyes. And yes some form of this still happens to me with adblockers or firefox.

I guess I thought the goal was to get people to use their websites, not fucking punish them for it.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

it feels so unfair that I don’t get to experience the life I have the way I imagined because getting here took too much out of me

Fuck, that’s relatable.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Really confused by these “no one ever said redditors are creative” comments. No one ever said that no one ever said that.

Don’t overthink it.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

This isn’t a problem in my country.

Along the same lines are the “Americans forget that other countries exist” comments.

Does American culture have a problem with ethnocentrism? Generally yes. Is reddit an American website where the vast majority of users, comments, posts, and topics are American? Also yes. When I’d see one of the “you’re an arrogant asshole for assuming this post is about the US” comments, I just assumed it’s someone being pedantic and contrarian for the sake of it. It just ruins what is sometimes a valid point.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Throwing out a false equivalency doesn’t make it any less true.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

White chocolate is not very good, but dark chocolate is fucking disgusting. I do have to think that people are just pretending to like it. I mean, alcohol is disgusting too but at least there’s a point to drinking it.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Even after reading the post I still wasn’t sure how Adobe was taking on Adobe.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

That’s how I feel about SoCal. I noticed on Google Maps a lot of homes are taking up the sea cliffs south of LA. I always thought that all coastline in CA was public…

ZombieTheZombieCat,

I don’t think questioning racializing something as arbitrary as living off grid amounts to the same thing as “just stop talking about race.” That’s either really misunderstood or just a bad faith argument.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

It’s just that this requires a set of skills most don’t possess

Thank you. I hate these comments implying that this is one hundred percent impossible or even that you need to be a rich person to accomplish it. I did it for a short time. But I went to town to get water and food, it’s not like you need to have every single thing be completely self sustaining (you can, but it’s not like it “doesn’t count” if you go get something). It was uncomfortable and hard, but that also contributed to what made it so rewarding. It was one of the best times in my life.

It is stupid to try to live in the wild without knowing what you’re doing though. The area I was in had good weather, close to a town etc. It wasn’t at the top of a mountain or anything.

Nearly two years after Texas' six-week abortion ban, more infants are dying (www.cnn.com)

Some 2,200 infants died in Texas in 2022 – an increase of 227 deaths, or 11.5%, over the previous year, according to preliminary infant mortality data from the Texas Department of State Health Services that CNN obtained through a public records request. Infant deaths caused by severe genetic and birth defects rose by 21.6%....

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Is it really “name calling” if it’s true?

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Banning abortion makes the parent and infant suffer completely unnecessarily, and often die completely unnecessarily.

[Rant] I hate the modern internet

I am fucking scared of the mass surveilence nightmare direction that the internet and the world as a whole is going towards… C2PA, france hacking itself into citizen phones, the UK anti encryption law, EU’s chat control, etc. Im also sick of and hate the “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality that corpos try to...

ZombieTheZombieCat,

It’s weird how I’ve seen several of these kinds of comments on lemmy recently. They’re responding to a post that’s pointing out an obvious social/political/economic problem by reducing it to the poster having some kind of personal mental health issue or accusng them of being stupid because they don’t know enough about the issue to have a degree in it.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen them anywhere else. Maybe they just always got buried on reddit, idk. But it’s an interesting redirection that’s a) super unproductive, and b) trying really hard to take focus off a very real social issue. “Your late stage capitalist country quickly descending into fascism? Have you considered Wellbutrin?”

ZombieTheZombieCat,

It’s more the hypocrisy of some people. The ones who cheer for a huge defense/foreign aid budget year after year no matter who it’s for, and then leave bitchy comments on FB about student loan forgiveness being “unfair” because it uses their tax dollars.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

If he could prove he was graduating in a matter of weeks then that’s fucking ridiculous. I was accepted to grad schools before I even passed my final undergrad classes. It’s just on a conditional basis, but nothing changed when I actually got the degree. Besides, there’s time between the last classes ending and commencement, then months between commencement and getting the actual degree in the mail and your transcripts being updated.

I’m hope he feels like he dodged a bullet.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

Even though you’re right, I think this sentiment minimizes the horrific things the American christian right is doing.

I keep seeing multiple variations of this comment on every single lemmy post about christian conservatives. Idk if it’s like an astroturfing thing or what, but it normalizes these kind of fascist acts. We should be shocked. We should be surprised and outraged and insulted. The minute we’re not is when it becomes normal. And we know that’s dangerous af because we’re already watching it happen.

ZombieTheZombieCat,

I thought it was illegal now for airlines to keep people on the tarmac for hours like this

With the way the world's going, is there even a point to anything anymore?

Climate is fucked, animals continue to go extinct even more, our money will be worth nothing the coming years… What motivation do I even have to care to keep going? The world is ran and basically owned by corrupt rich people, there’s poverty, war, etc. It makes me sick to my stomach the way to world is. So I ask, why bother...

ZombieTheZombieCat,

The internet is not qualified to be your therapist.

proceeds to diagnose internet stranger with depression

ZombieTheZombieCat,

It’s also so much more expensive to buy from small, local businesses. Not everyone can afford to do that, no matter how much they hate buying from Amazon or Walmart.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • KamenRider
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • KbinCafe
  • Socialism
  • oklahoma
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • All magazines