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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I don’t mean a literal work output “quota”, that’s what I meant with layers of abstraction. A better question to ask yourself is how many Americans live paycheck to paycheck? The expensive nature of the modern world, the difficulty in being paid well enough to achieve not just stability but some personal forward progress - getting the resources for these is what I mean about needing to hit a “quota”.

    What proportion of Americans are unable to hit the quota, described this way? What are the consequences, both to them and to wider society? Pretty bad situation, reminds me of just more complicated/obfuscated, “fuzzier” feudalism.




  • Problems pointed out by commenters aside, I am under the impression that there is very little oversight about this kind of stuff anymore.

    For one thing - unless they’ve changed recently, Amazon “bins” alike products from multiple suppliers, meaning if a bad actor is introducing counterfeits (or just less stringently tested, for more fungible products) - Amazon doesn’t even know who they got them from, by the time that’s discovered.

    But for another thing, the absolutely incredible volume of products - how on earth is anyone making sure these random-character-generated “brands” are safe?

    I lack much in the way of direct evidence, cuz I’ve got shit to do and this isn’t my life’s focus - but it seems apparent that there cannot possibly be the kind of consumer safety testing that we want going on. And if that’s true, it’s only a matter of time before the smart capitalists realize no one is watching and they can make stuff even cheaper (I think they already have), and then how long before we as a society discover all the harm that’s done as a result?

    I’d love to be wrong about this, but like so many tech innovations, I have a feeling we’re going to find out later there were huge harms done before we learned how to rein them in. The speed, volume, and price we’ve grown used to with Amazon seems to preclude consumer safety.


  • Thanks for the info! So far I’ve been enjoying those same characteristics. I spend my work day arguing with computers, so I have little patience for doing more of it when I’m off (more seriously, I carefully marshall my tech efforts outside of work as a long-term strategy against burnout). I appreciate how “out of the box” gaming (and anything else I’ve tried) works in Bazzite, and the stability has been great too. Though to be fair, def helps that it’s my first experience with Plasma which really makes the “feeling” of the OS pop, in an unfair way lol.









  • I love botched idioms so much. “It’s not rocket surgery” is my go to, but the best ones are unintentional (and completely torture the original).

    Best I’ve heard lately was on the air, local NPR affiliate, and the unfortunate lass said something, complimenting I think a film director, saying “He’s hitting all cylinders at just the very top level”.

    (The original is “firing on all cylinders”, which just describes an internal combustion engine working properly and not suffering from that particular degradation, cylinders misfiring. Hitting them, anywhere, let alone “at the top level”, is utter nonsense and it was delightful to me, she flat out abused that idiom)

    Edit to add: some related favs which aren’t quite botched idioms but which kinda “rhyme” with the idea - both meaning “okay, time to get the thing done”:

    • “let’s kick this puppy” (given to me by a particularly influential teacher)
    • “let’s shake this baby” (my own personal creation, occurred to me while getting my kiddo ready for one thing or another)
    • (these having the same flow as e.g. “let’s knock this out”, “let’s blow this taco stand”, etc.)