I’m not talking about the poor: as you say, they’re tired and the assaults of ultra-capitalism are relentless.

I’m talking about the middle class which, in the eyes of the ultra-rich, is just as insignificant as the ultra-poor, and is really only a few paychecks away from the same fate.

Middle class people happily ignores the fate of their fellow man in the street, bow their head and say nothing, believing if they don’t make too much fuss, the ultra-rich will maintain the status quo and they won’t do too badly.

That’s us. WE should pick up the pitchfork. We have the energy and we have a good reason, because really, we’re just slightly better than the poor and we pay a lot more taxes than the ultra-billionnaire sumbitches. But we don’t.

And poor people still die homeless in the street.

You’d think pitchforks would sell well. But apathy seems incurable, as people appear to have internalized staggering levels of inequality as a fact of normal life.

No device made to kill a human is humane

Yes but some are more inhumane than others. That’s why the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons exists, which lists the following protocols:

1. Non-detectable fragments: weapons specially designed to shatter into tiny pieces, which aren’t detectable in the human body. Examples are fragmented bullets or projectiles filled with broken glass.
2. Mines, booby traps, and other devices: This includes anti-personnel mines, which are mines specially designed to target humans rather than tanks.
3. Incendiary weapons: Weapons that cause fires aren’t permitted for use on on civilian populations or in forested areas.
4. Blinding lasers: Laser weapons specifically designed to cause permanent blindness.
5. Explosive remnants of war: Parties that have used cluster bombs in combat are required to help clear any unexploded remains.

Thermite is a protocol 3 weapon. So again, while I understand that Ukraine is desperate to defend itself, using that stuff is not great.

I hate Putin and any Russian war sympathizer as much as the next guy, but…

My grandfather got a white phosphorus burn during WW2. He told me it was the most terrible pain he ever felt in his entire life, you can’t extinguish it, and he wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. I heard the same kind of stories from people who got napalm burns in Vietnam.

I’m pretty sure thermite munitions are in the same category of basically inhumane weapons regardless of the circumstances, right up there with NBCs, mines, napalm and white phosphorus, and I can’t say I fully side with the Ukrainians on this one. I mean I understand why they do it, but I also remember my grandfather’s leg and the horror of what he told me.

AirTag in the trash. Quite fitting…

file a complaint with the FCC. You are more likely going to get someone who can/will actually help

Hahaha! That was a good one 🙂

Pray tell, what possible benefit can Lemmy communities gain from Facebook users?

You do realize most people who joined the Fediverse did so because Facebook and the likes are a steaming pile of shit, right?

What possible benefit is there to the pile of shit coming to splatter itself here uninvited?

It’s not just a matter of blocking Threads users.

Facebook is coming on here to slurp up data I don’t want them to have, and enriching their own Threads ecosystem with Fediverse content they haven’t lifted a finger to create.

Not to mention, when Threads users are able to fully interact in the Fediverse, do you really want that particular bunch to create noise in your communities? I don’t. There’s a reason why I avoid Facebook in all its forms.

Great.
I joined the Fediverse to escape Facebook’s toxic interpretation of communities, so Facebook is coming to the Fediverse instead.
Just great…

And he can’t dismiss supreme court’s justices…

But he can have them wasted now.

Ths SCOTUS is a corrupt MAGA outfit. Is anyone surprised?

That’s the justices who killed Roe v. Wade we’re talking about, remember.

I expect it would in fact be hugely expensive to keep the woman’s implant going: anything medical is even more expensive that aeronautical stuff. And also, who bears responsibility when the company tanks and the woman has an issue with her implant?

But here’s what I think: innovative startups that want to run tests of experimental implants (looking at you Elon) should be legally required to set money aside to support the test subjects’ implanted hardware until the end of their natural life or until the implant fails, whichever comes first, if the company tanks.

The money should pay for a skeletal crew of the original engineers working for a government-owned company set up and dedicated solely to that support after the original company disappears, and it should pay for the test subjects’ medical expenses related to their implants.

I’m kind of in that boat. I mean not really, and it’s not life-changing like it is for the lady, but it’s the same sort of issue.

I have implants inside of me. They’re RFID and NFC transponders of various kind made by Dangerous Things. They’re not essential to my life in the sense that I could very well do without them, but they’re immensely useful and handy on a day-to-day basis.

One of them is a payment implant. The implant was made in 2020 and is not in fact allowed by Mastercard - meaning if the payment processor figures out it’s under my skin, they’ll strike it off the EMVCo network and I’ll lose the ability to make payments with my hand. It expires in 2029, and I already know after that date that there probably won’t be a replacement available. So I will lose that ability in 2029.

And you know what? It really does feel like a loss: this is my second payment implant because the first one failed a year in, and that’s what it felt like. Similarly, I have other implants that I use all the time to open doors and authenticate with online services, and when those fail (and some of them did, I had to have them replaced), it does feel like losing a bodily function too.

I’m an amputee, so I know what it feels like to lose bits of myself, and when one of my implant fails, it feels very similar. Not the same and not as terrible of course, but it’s the same kind of feeling: you feel less yourself and less able than you used to be.

The other question that arises is whether implants become part of your body, and whether anybody is legally allowed to take them away from you. In other words, nobody is legally allowed to remove your heart or your spleen without your consent, but are implants treated the same way?

Like for example, suppose I go to court and a judge reckons my cryptographic implant was used to encrypt evidence on my computer: can the judge order it removed from my body against my will to send it to a forensic lab? I mean after all, it’s now part of my body and providing me with a new bodily ability of sorts: it could be argued that removing my implant can be construed as disabling me - which, as I said, really does feel a bit like that.

This has never come up in court, and I’m an honest, nice guy so I won’t be the one breaking that particular ground. But the question is intriguing.

the only unrealistic part is the implied community cohesion

Those who are old enough and grew up in small town America remember the sense of community. If you’ve never experienced it, I feel sorry for you, whether it’s because you grew up in a big city or because it disappeared for your generation.

But I will say this - echoing what Bamfic said: yeah, you kind of needed to be white. I was and so was the store owner and the dude who was doing the fake holdups. So I’m not deluding myself: I know the sense of community didn’t include everybody necessarily. But it was a thing for sure.

and servers aren’t free

Since when do cribs need a fucking server to rock?

They’re going for property managers who can claim expenses.

The Pitchfork and Torches

They don’t work without a subscription.

Just another company taking part in the worldwide subscription model scam.

Here’s another one: LynkD. I have a few of their NFC padlocks. They’re not particularly well made, nor are they particularly secure, but they’re convenient and I like them to secure low-importance things like my gym locker or the shed at the back of my garden.

I wanted to buy more. LynkD informed me that the padlocks now require a subscription. It’s even written at the bottom of the product page:

Membership to these platforms costs $15/Month + $5/Device + $5/User with the first user free. An active membership is required in order to use this device.

Yes, you read that right: a fucking PADLOCK now requires a subscription.

The mind boggles…

I don’t know if ChatGPT is good for mental health. My guess is it’s probably terrible, but maybe not. I’m not a psychiatrist and stranger things have happened.

What I do know is this: while you open up to the chatbot and reveal your innermost private thoughts to it, OpenAI and Microsoft are listening in, and they’re probably selling all you’re saying to data brokers and advertisers - sorry, “partners” - almost in real time.

If that doesn’t creep the living shit out of you, you probably do need psychiatric help…

I knew a guy in the late 90s who checked himself into jail every winter. He just didn’t have enough money to heat his home and buy food at the same time, and he was disabled and couldn’t land a job in construction no more, so that’s the only thing he found to stay alive.

When the snow started to come down, he’d go to our local minimart with a plastic gun. You know, like the really cheesy ones with a red cap at the muzzle, to make sure nobody would think it was real and gun him down my mistake, and to avoid getting a harsh sentence. He knew the store owner, since it was a small town and everybody knew each other.

He’d say hello, point the gun at him and gently say “Could you please call the police like last year?” The store owner used to try to talk him out of it, but he’d say “Don’t force me to make it real because I don’t wanna.”

Then the sheriff would show up - they knew each other too of course - and he would try to convince him this wasn’t a good idea. And the guy would say “Look, will you book me or not? Because if you don’t, you’ll come back next week to my place but with the coroner this time.”

So the sheriff would book him. And the judge, who knew exactly why he was there at the trial, would sentence him to 5 months - time enough to get out in spring.

After I left town, I heard he kept doing that for many years, until he got tired of being poor and committed suicide.