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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Foltz claims that she received a $92,000 annual salary while men with the same duties and qualifications received an annual salary of $115,000.

    Foltz also claims that SpaceX uses different job titles for the same position as a way to pay women and minorities less than their white or male counterparts, TechCrunch reported.

    This is an empty claim. She didn’t even have the same job titles as the people she was comparing herself against. There are a thousand reasons one person can be paid more than another. Often it’s just negotiating prowess. Often it’s the responsibility of the job title, and the risk and hours that entails. Often it’s tenure at the company, or social skills. Her claim amounts to, “pay me more because I have a vagina.” No.


  • Kicking the habit Efforts by authorities to curb smoking and its health hazards, not least by prohibiting puffing in restaurants and cafes and banning ads for cigarettes, have prompted sharp reductions in cigarette sales in recent years.

    While I support bans in restaurants and cafes, I don’t support prohibition, which is what a lot of Western nations are aiming at. We learned our lesson during the alcohol prohibition years in America, and for the last 70 years around the world with marijuana prohibition. The social effects are far worse when forcing recreational drugs underground. Educate support addiction programs, but don’t ban.


  • Open license software will never beat paid software in the consumer space. I know that’s a controversial opinion, but it’s been proven a thousand times. There’s no way to beat the user experience of Reddit when they have a hundred experienced UX designers doing nothing but optimising for engagement. We think the overall experience is worse, which is why we’re here, but we are the minority. Lemmy still hasn’t figured out basic problems like what happens to the user experience when an instance defederates from another. The user had no control over that, but suddenly their subscribed communities have disappeared without notice or explanation. Now they have to find another instance to subscribe to, and they lose their entire Lemmy identity.





  • How many times has capitalism become dictatorships or fascists?

    A handful of times. Most capitalist nations are not authoritarian. Purely by the numbers, it has a much better track record. Of course, “it’s not real capitalism/communism” always derails this discussion.

    I think you outline why communism inevitably fails. Marx advocated for violent revolution to overthrow the “bourgeois” democracy. The moment democracy is gone, the strong take and retain power. This is why, no matter the system, democracy must be the bottom line. It ensures that power is distributed. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than the alternatives.



  • I’ve never met anyone who hates communism more than the colleagues of mine who grew up under communism. Their neighbours disappeared for saying the wrong things. They were hungry and cold as children every day. Sometimes they didn’t have any shoes. They weren’t allowed to leave their country for holidays. They couldn’t afford it, even if they were allowed. They couldn’t study what they wanted. Their entire educational system was political propaganda. Freedom of religion didn’t exist.

    It always amazes me how the most vocal proponents of communism come from the most sheltered, most privileged people alive who would retch from learning about the atrocities committed in the name of communism. If they only spent a few minutes on Google.






  • At 18 we let people vote on the direction of the entire nation. We let them buy houses and go into debt for life. We let them die in war for their country. Most places in the world let them drink and get married. Of all of these rights, the absolute least of them is the right to fuck whichever other adult they choose. I cannot understand the utter insanity of thinking one is responsible enough to vote but not have sex. If you don’t think they’re responsible enough to have sex then they’re sure as shit not responsible enough to everything else.

    18 year olds are adults. It’s time we stop infantilising them. People used to get married much younger than even that. If they want to fuck an older person, more power to them.