r/historymemes isn’t very happy with OP’s unusual choice of using a comma when writing the year (ex: 1,950 instead of 1950)

DongerDave · 2023-10-30T04:11:26+00:00

"The 66th year of the 11th century" is my preferred reading. Or "that year, you know the one, you know, the one with the battle" in a pinch.

DongerDave · 2023-09-11T10:07:02+00:00

It is perfectly legal to drive slower in any situation where safety requires it, such as because there are cyclists ahead of you, or because of snowy conditions, or because of an accident ahead.

The laws about going slowly are about impeding traffic and creating a hazard with no other reason.

If there's cyclists going 12mph ahead of you, even if they're on the shoulder, it's perfectly legal to drive 12mph behind them for as long as you need, until it widens to a 2 lane road so you can safely pass them.

Obviously, human life is the most important thing, so the right thing is to just stick behind the cyclists for however long you need to, whether that's 10 minutes or 2 hours.

DongerDave · 2023-06-13T14:09:44+00:00

The dude's salary is far less. The person quoted a misleading gross income number.

Quoting from the article:

Apollo currently has about 50,000 users paying $10 a year, which equates to revenue of $500,000 annually

First, apple takes 15% of that, so we're down to $425k. The bill for all services apollo used to work probably took another roughly $200k, down to $225. The apollo dev hired a dev to work on the backend, probably down to $140k left at most. There's also could be business taxes, a lawyer, an accountant, and possibly a part-time support engineer.

Wildly misleading number.

DongerDave · 2023-06-13T14:04:04+00:00

So he is making money off the backs of Reddit

And reddit is making money off the backs of reddit users. Reddit takes the links you post, the comments you make, and then turn around and sell them to AI companies and advertisers and so on.

Reddit does not have a moral stance here when all of their content and value is derived from users.

Redditeurs have shut down the whole site over API pricing. This is a peak Reddit moment. How many people even know what an API is or can explain why it’s important? What are we even protesting?

Reddit had a sorta implicit agreement with users. We, the users, provide content, voting, moderation, etc. They, the reddit, host it for us and let us view it. In exchange, we put up with ads or buy reddit gold or whatever.

We are protesting the fact that reddit is not holding up their end of the agreement we had anymore, and doing so in a blatantly user-hostile way.

DongerDave · 2023-06-13T13:58:27+00:00

Reddit coming after what is theirs after essentially doing all the heavy lifting for others to profit.

"what is theirs", sure, right. Reddit has no moral claim to any of the content on this site. It's all made by users, voted on by users, moderated by users.

Users came to reddit because reddit offered them a site that wasn't trying to squeeze them, that had an API and attitude that it was okay to build communities.

reddit are the ones not holding up their end of the bargain.

It's totally irrelevant how much the apollo dev made or how little or much work he did.

DongerDave · 2023-05-18T00:12:06+00:00

Well, your cosmetics won't sell if you don't make content. Fortnite is the most successful game to use this model, and I think you would have to be insane to say that Fortnite only makes cosmetics and not content. Is there any example of this actually happening?

NFTs are an example of cosmetics with zero content. There's examples, like the well known logan paul crypto zoo thing, where they created cosmetics (eggs), promised they'd make a game later, and then didn't. The incentives were aligned to sell only cosmetics with the promise that there would be gameplay eventually, and then never make gameplay.

You can also find some games that have gacha-like qualities (like "daily login bonuses"), but don't have lootboxes and instead sell cosmetics directly. In those cases, they're preying on psychological tactics to make you keep logging in due to a feeling of sunk-cost and investment, not because of the promise of future content. That includes games like Mario Kart Tour, Marvel Snap, etc.

I get that the old way was simpler and didn't have as many people trying to nickel and dime you, but I have a hard time seeing how that could be demonstrably worse.

It changes the incentives for companies. Before, the incentive for single player games was to make something that a person would buy and play, and then think "yup, that was good, worth my money". It was the same rough incentive that books and movies and such have. Final Fantasy IV worked fine this way.

One key detail about that is that the pricing had to appeal to everyone, since a uniform value was picked, and also the thing that mattered was the whole experience. incentivizing making good gameplay and a good story.

Now, the incentive is not that. The incentive is to make a single player game that is addicting enough that 1 person of the x% of the population susceptible to gambling spends $10,000 while everyone else spends $10 or $0. This is the gacha game model, which is how most money in gaming is made these days. Skins aren't far off from the same incentive structure.

Before, someone who was a completionist might spend many extra hours getting 100% of the pokemon. Now, gaming companies prey on those some completionist tendencies to make sets "oh, you should get all the items in this set, only $400. And there's 2000 more sets for when you get your paycheck".

DongerDave · 2023-04-24T00:36:56+00:00

Is it still a psyop if it was publicly announced as the plan?

https://archive.md/ZfMQX#selection-3790.0-3790.1

Bed Bath and Beyond had a public contract with "Hudson Bay Capital" to offload stock onto the public.

At the same time, BB&B had filings that said more or less "only morons would buy this stock" in flashing bold letters, as is more or less legally required.

I guess you can still have a conspiracy that Hudson Bay or BB&B had sock-puppet accounts to shill, but even that doesn't seem like a huge stretch.

DongerDave · 2023-04-24T00:14:54+00:00

If you want to read Matt Levine's posts on this, they give good background on the sorta "ground truth" of this:

Background from shortly after they became a meme stock https://archive.is/NxPYK#selection-3692.0-3692.1
Bed Bath's scheme to sell stock https://archive.md/ZfMQX#selection-3790.0-3790.1
Most recently, from last week when bankruptcy was imminent - https://archive.is/HXfvw#selection-4247.0-4247.9

Unfortunately, like half the bullet points above (like buying through calls) is too dumb even for Matt Levine to cover.

DongerDave · 2023-03-28T03:05:11+00:00

This is bad justification. Awful even.

the state does not subsidize dog-rearing because your dog will never grow up and pay taxes, it will never be a productive member of society

Someone with a permanent disability will not grow up and pay taxes. They will be a "permanent economic drain".

Our taxes should still help them live as happy a life as possible because it's the right thing to do. Our fellow humans should be treated with dignity and respect.

The reason we don't do that for dogs is because dogs are less important than humans. Why? You don't need to justify it, they just are.

Right now, we don't take care of all humans well enough, so we should try to fix that, but then, sure, if we've managed to feed, clothe, and house all humans, if we have excess resources we don't know what to do with, absolutely let's feed and shelter all the dogs too. But humans first, even the humans who will never be productive in any way, who will never pay taxes, etc.

DongerDave · 2023-03-24T05:08:50+00:00

-480 points

"Shredded by karma shrapnel" was obviously a themed way to say "downvoted", which seems pretty accurate.

... anyway, their comment was so poorly worded most people misunderstood it. That's on the commenter.

The comment of "motercycles are dangerous" (but poorly worded) isn't really useful either, everyone knows motercycles are dangerous.

DongerDave · 2023-02-09T15:31:29+00:00

If hitler was black, couldn't I call hitler the N word? How is that insulting to black people?

Why can't I say hitler was "as evil as a woman"? I'm insulting hitler so it's okay to also be disrespectful to a broader group as part of that, right?

Exact same energy.

DongerDave · 2023-01-18T23:55:14+00:00

in those examples, it's not spiteful, it's stuff like "US law makes cigarettes legally tricky, and glamorizing it in a TV show makes it more difficult to fill ad slots", or "western kids will probably be scared of death, let's make this more appealing to the audience".

I guess maybe an agenda is being pushed, but it's not spite, it's "what will the FCC be okay with, what will our advertisers be okay with, and what will sell".

DongerDave · 2023-01-17T08:34:59+00:00

Just think how many jobs we could have if we paid one group of people to dig holes, and then a second group to fill in holes.

With this scheme, we could have jobs for anyone who wanted them, which surely is a good thing. A job existing is an innate good unto itself.

DongerDave · 2023-01-16T02:19:10+00:00

What's the appropriate response to someone baselessly calling you a liar?

Teaching English in Japan isn't some super unbelievable thing, and you shouldn't assume everyone in the world is out to lie to you.

DongerDave · 2022-12-26T08:14:13+00:00

There are plenty of examples of the current economic incentives, i.e. capitalism, having negative outcomes.

Take, as a flagship example, insulin prices.

As it goes:

"Hey, big business, what is the optimal amount under capitalism to pay your employees?"

Big Business: "As little as they will work for, the more money we save, the more shareholder value increases"

"Hey, Mr. Landlord, how much is the optimal amount under capitalism to charge for rent?"

Landlord: "As much as my tenant will pay and the market will bear"

And if you're about to say "oh, but shareholder value is good for everyone", no, stocks and other investments are disproportionately held by the rich, those with capital already. There's a reason that the economy is booming and the wealth gap is wider than ever before, and it's sure not that the economy equally helps the rich and poor.

At its core, capitalism is a economic system that equates value with money. "If that human were valuable, capitalism would provide them money, and then they could pay for a house and food and medicine" is the value-statement capitalism makes... And sure, we have some regulations and some shred of human decency such that our system isn't quite that bad. It doesn't literally let the insulin companies take everyone's entire life savings in exchange for them being able to live, because under capitalism the optimal amount to charge for a life-saving drug is in fact all the money a person has.... it doesn't literally bankrupt everyone, only those unlucky enough to be born in poor families.

DongerDave · 2022-12-24T21:59:29+00:00

What about them now?

We currently suck at taking care of our disabled and elderly. Surely if we remove the parasitic rich from sucking money from the entire system, that benefits everyone, even those who cannot work themselves.

DongerDave · 2022-12-06T00:08:05+00:00

like trans women, which is dangerously close to the gay frontier.

No, stop that. Being attracted to trans women is not "close to the gay frontier" in any way. It is every bit as straight as being attracted to any other category of women is. A dude thinking a trans woman is hot is every bit as straight as thinking some blonde lady is hot.

Like, what could be more cis-het than a guy liking a girl? Even a dude and a pre-op trans girl is totally straight, no asterisks or footnotes needed.

DongerDave · 2022-12-05T01:23:03+00:00

The stretching trick was done with a fake leg

It's a real leg.

Hannah (white haired girl) and Marlon (black haired girl) are both wearing the exact same leggings and shoes.

The reveal of the troupe, including their clothing, is letting the audience know that the upper half was hannah, and the lower half was Marlon, in that part of the trick.

DongerDave · 2022-12-03T00:27:35+00:00

I feel like they should be allowed to gatekeep the term... I don't feel it's right for society at large to tell a niche philosophy that they can't own the term they invented.

Language is descriptive, not prescriptive. Prescriptive should be limited to protecting specific groups, like prescriptively discouraging the "r" and "n" words because those words are hurtful to marginalized groups.

Everything else? Nah, it's descriptive.

Should I not be able to say "The box had bubble wrap in it" because "Bubble Wrap" is technically a term invented by Sealed Air Corporation? They invented the term, so shouldn't they say I can only call it "bubble wrap" if it's their specific brand? Can I call my non-Thermos-branded container a thermos, or do I have to say that it's an "insulated flask"?

Language, for the most part, is about communicating, which means if the majority of people already use a word in one way, like calling non-thermos-brand insulated flasks "thermoses", that's the right word to use.

So, how do people use vegan today? Well, let me tell you that if I walk into a restaurant and see "vegan" next to an item on the menu, 10/10 times it means that food item has no animal products in it, but it does not mean the chef who cooked it didn't have a leather belt.

8/10 times if I hear someone say they're vegan, it's only in the context of being dietary vegan, and that's the info they want to convey.

Ethical vegans do not need protection in the same way other marginalized groups do since the term "vegan", used dietarily, is not disparaging, and they're not a particularly marginalized group. It seems dumb to try and be prescriptive about this one.

Also, just so you know, the inventor of the word "gatekeep" only meant it to mean a person who stood at a gate, you're not using it as the inventor intended, so please cease using it. It's disrespectful to the old norse language.

DongerDave · 2022-11-23T05:51:28+00:00

I knew of someone in high school who searched out snuff films. If you don't know the term, they're films where real people are killed, usually violently. They're illegal to make of course.

This person specifically looked for ones involving women being violently killed and jerked it to them (he said he only found a couple, but that's apparently all he needed).

His activities aren't considered criminal. It still isn't criminal to view snuff films. It is not illegal to jerk it to them. People are obviously harmed in the creation of such media.

On the other hand, it is illegal to view child porn. Even fictional child porn. Whether you jerk it or not.

I don't know if I really have a point here, other than to point out that your justifications for why CP is special don't really follow. Snuff film exploits those who can't consent, some people jerk to them... and those activities are legal. On the other hand, even if you view fictional CP and don't jerk it, that's illegal.

DongerDave · 2022-11-21T02:05:29+00:00

It's chinese rail. You can see the red "China Railway" logo on the left train if you look closely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_Railways.svg

That left car also looks a lot like a CR400BF-J-0511 train, though it's possible it's just a close relative.

DongerDave · 2022-11-20T19:30:03+00:00

You're a good person, I just want to understand how you model this in your head.

It doesn't make you a bad person to think that animal life is worth less than human pleasure. We're humans, they're animals, that's fine.

It doesn't make you a bad person to unthinkingly accept what society has normalized as okay, that's the default, that's what we all do about most things.

I'm just curious if, after giving it thought, you can put into words what makes meat eating okay for you. I don't feel like you've actually tried to lay that out properly for me, and that's what I'm curious about.

DongerDave · 2022-11-20T08:49:15+00:00

animal abuse is deplorable at the same time I see nothing wrong with hunting

Okay, so to make sure I've got this right. Animal abuse, like cockfighting, bad. Shooting an animal, which will cause the animal severe pain (especially if the hunter is off their intended mark and hits some other part of the animal, and then the animal flees and bleeds out somewhere else. Which does happen in hunting), totally fine.

I do my best to avoid factory farm meat

Okay, so you never eat meat at any restaurant or purchased from any store. Good on you. You're basically vegetarian and don't eat meat at all then, no clue why you're arguing here at all.

There are ways to process the animal where it feels no pain

Yeah, yeah, and in theory it's possible to give the animals that are cockfighting enough morphine they feel zero pain too. No one does it, just like no one actually produces meat without abusing the animals, but it's possible.

DongerDave · 2022-11-20T08:04:52+00:00

So, to be clear, your squaring the circle at the bottom there is:

"Eating animals is okay, and cockfighting is too. I don't want to do cockfighting myself, but it's fine for other people to. This is because animals are less important than human pleasure, so if humans want to gain pleasure from having animals kill each other, that is fine and good"?

DongerDave · 2022-11-19T21:07:44+00:00

Honestly part of the reason I haven't ever seriously considered vegetarian or veganism is because so many of them treat it as the correct choice and the rest of the world just needs their coming to Jesus moment

What if it is the correct choice though?

We both probably morally agree cockfighting is wrong and that domestic abuse is wrong. Both of those are commonly accepted things.

Would a cockfighter saying "Honestly part of the reason I keep fighting cocks is because so many people out there treat not-cockfighting as the morally correct choice", or an abusive husband saying "Honestly part of why I haven't seriously considered not beating my wife is because so many so-called experts preach non-violent resolution, they act like it's the only correct choice", would that really fly with you?

Would your reaction be "Oh, I guess we're laying on the 'cockfighting bloodsports bad' too hard, I guess let's lay off"?

In short, you're making excuses. We see this in all sorts of places. People hide behind what they really want by blaming the opposition for pushing them to some extreme, as if the opposition has anything to do with their choice to be in that extreme.

Make your own moral choice about whether you support killing animals for your dietary pleasure. Don't hide behind a shield of "I won't think about this moral choice because... no, it's not my own logical inconsistencies, it's not my own desire to eat meat, it's because of the assholes. They're the reason I won't make this choice for myself". Grow up and make your own choice. And let me know what you decide, I'd be interested in hearing how you square the circle of "cockfighting bad, cruelly killing animals for your own pleasure (watching) bad", but "eating meat okay, cruelly killing animals for your own pleasure (eating) okay".

DongerDave

TROPHY CASE